Blind Obedience In George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant

Sit. Stay. Shake. Speak. These are all commands that someone would voice to a dog, and expect it to follow accordingly. Dogs are known for their obedience and unbroken loyalty. They would do anything to please their masters; even put their selves in dangerous positions just to satisfy their authoritative masters. The question at hand is, would a human act just as obedient, no matter the circumstances? Some may deny that humans would be as accommodating as man’s best friend, but just a glimpse at past history could reveal otherwise. The Holocaust is a prime example of this notion of blind obedience. Nazi soldiers revealed they performed terrible acts, because they were just following orders. Many works of literature have also shed light

He is not well liked by the local people and states secretly that he is all for the Burman people, and that he opposes the British’s implications. During his time there, an elephant in ‘must’ starts rampaging through the colonization. There is not much responsibility Orwell undertakes until the elephant kills a man. At that point, he decides to pursue the elephant. After his tracking, he finds the elephant and notes that it was peacefully eating and had a sort of “grandmotherly air” with it. He does not feel the need to confront the elephant anymore, until he sees the locals waiting for him to take action. He reluctantly calls for a large rifle and shoots the now peaceful beast. The elephant does not die right away, and even after Orwell has fired multiple rounds into it, the animal continues to suffer in pain. Orwell cannot bare the sight of it, and walks away feeling as though he has just murdered such a gentle creature. At the end of the story, it is revealed that Orwell acted the way he did because he wanted to save face with the Burman people and with the Imperialists. He was acting in accordance to what he believed others would want him to do, and not thinking with his own conscious. He was carelessly and blindly following the chain of command, without a second

In George Clooney’s nineteen fifties set film, Goodnight and Good Luck, a CBS news crew actively speaks out against Senator McCarthy and his views on ‘reforming’ America. This film, based on a true story, depicts a time when the United States was in a time of paranoia and its members were blindly following the advice of a source they believed would save them from communism. In the film, the head news anchor, Edward R. Murrow, along with his staff carefully argue against McCarthy and his ideals. They deliberately went against him on live television, despite all of the pressures from marketing and media to just conform to the senator. What sparked this rebuttal was the verdict by Senator McCarthy that Murrow was a communist. The crew felt the need to rightly inform the American people that Murrow was innocent, and that just like Murrow blameless people were being accused in spite of others. Many people were afraid to go against McCarthy strictly because of fear, but once the CBS news team took the initiative people were not afraid to challenge the senator and do what was morally