Every author puts a great deal of effort in making their work successful, meaningful and symbolic however, some author do excellent job in achieving this goal and on the other hand some might be unsuccessful to achieve the goal. In the essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, the author George Orwell has worked extremely hard to express and relate the meaning of the symbols to the story. In the essay, the protagonist character George Orwell is the Indian imperial police officer in Burma and is hated by Burmese people because he is a part of the British Empire who is the oppressor of the Burmese people. Orwell does show sympathy of native people of Burma but he cannot do anything else to change the minds of the British Empire. Afterwards, he comes to the point where he has to make an unwanted decision of shooting an elephant due to the pressure of the Burmese People and also Orwell himself did not want to lose his pride to the native people of the Burma. Throughout the essay, George Orwell has used several symbols effectively such as, the
George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” was written as an attack on British imperialism and totalitarianism. Orwell recounts an experience of shooting an escaped elephant from his time as a policeman in Burma during the British Raj, utilizing a remorseful, reflective tone. He observes that “When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys” (14), and that “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it” (14). Orwell is not only correct in his assertion that totalitarianism is harmful, he further explains how it is detrimental to all those that are umbrellaed under it.
In George Orwell's analytically essay, Shooting an Elephant, Orwell reflects on the five years he spent working as a police officer for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, India. While writing about a serious issue in his essay, George takes a less formal approach to this particular piece of writing; reflecting on past events in a form of a personal memoir. It is within his memoir, Orwell explores the cruelty of the human race and the actions people, including himself, take to prevent further ridicule and abuse. George Orwell utilizes an extreme humanist perspective against imperialism, using his own traumatizing experiences in India to support his claim regarding the 'natural' cruelty humans seem to inherit when feeling oppressed.
In George Orwell's essay "Shooting An Elephant," he writes about racial prejudice. Orwell is a British officer in Burma. The author is, "for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British"(842). Orwell feels caught in the middle of this cultural struggle. He sympathizes with the oppressed people of India, but is treated poorly, since he is viewed as one of the oppressors. He comes to terms with the role he plays in this vicious cycle of oppression , as an imperial servant, and the influence it has on him to shoot an elephant.
...t it is not what the essay is chiefly about. The essay is actually concerned mainly with the writer's own personality and his views on various matters such as the evils of tyranny and oppression associated with imperialism. It succeeds in presenting the contradictions in the writer's thought and feeling and clarifying his complex attitude towards the British Raj. According to Keith Alldritt, "Shooting an Elephant marks an important stage in Orwell's career because it shows his first discovery of a form appropriate to his needs .........Shooting an Elephant is a transitional essay. It contains vestiges of the early symbolist manner and it also points forward to the mature essays of the forties." The essay is, as Tom Hopkinson points out, "an example of his prose style at its most lucid and precise." It is also emblematic of Orwell's moral nature and human concern.
In 1936 George Orwell wrote a short story titled "Shooting an Elephant.” In it he discusses a fictional story of a man who kills an elephant and the implications that arise afterward. He relates it to British Imperialism and uses the individual's experiences as a reference to larger experiences that we all face. Many issues of the societal pressures and morality of killing arise over the death of the elephant as well as how the narrator’s identity was altered by his environment. While it appears to be a story of a rampant elephant being euthanized, George Orwell uses the story as an analogy to describe man's inner struggle between acceptance, morality, and the pursuit of power.
In the essay Shooting an Elephant, the author intends to make the reader feel disturbed and uneasy by describing his negatives experiences in India. He tries to clarify the terrible and harmful impact that Imperialism had. By shooting the elephant, Orwell demonstrates the strong power of peer pressure and how it has affected his actions and his will.
George Orwell acknowledged that every line of his serious work that he had written since 1936 was implicitly or explicitly associated with anti-imperialism and in favor of democratic socialism. By democratic socialism he mostly focused on liberal and humane beliefs rather than its political and economical principles (Meyers 2000, 90). G. Orwell grew up in such atmosphere where despotic British Empire had been dominating over the East by treating the natives in a dehumanizing manner, making them feel inferior to the empire and eliminating their personal autonomy by the idea of imperialism’s being superior. However, his experiences while working in Burma made him aware of the opposite case. In his essay “Shooting the Elephant”
Every day, each individual will look back on decisions he or she have made and mature from those experiences. Though it takes time to realize these choices, the morals and knowledge obtained from them are priceless. In George Orwell’s nonfictional essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, a young Orwell was stationed in Burma for the British imperial forces, tasked to deal with an elephant who destroyed various parts of the village Moulmein while its owner was away. Backed by second thoughts and a crowd of thousands, he finds himself shooting the elephant and reflecting that it was not justified; however, it was a choice pushed by his duty and the people. Written with a fusion of his young and old self’s outlook on shooting the elephant, Orwell’s essay is a sensational read that captivates his audience and leaves them questioning his decision.
Orwell’s essay demonstrated the British supremacy against the colonized as it revealed how insignificant their deaths were. Being a police superintendent in Burma, Orwell was called when an otherwise tame elephant ran rampant. In his search for the animal, he stumbled upon a dead Burman, who was trampled by the elephant, and referred to him as a “black Dravidian coolie.” Oxford dictionary defined a coolie as “an offensive term for an unskilled native labourer in an Asian country.” At the end of the essay, Orwell tracked down the elephant and killed it. When the discussion arose about the shooting, a young British man said he was in the wrong by justifying that even “an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie”. Yet, Orwell stood by his actions, as he stated “I was very glad that the coolie had been killed…it gave me a suffic...
The conflicted Englishman was sought to end the life of an elephant that was terrorizing the many homes of Burmese civilians, but his biggest conflict wasn’t shooting an elephant, it was worrying about how the Burmese people would think of him if he didn’t shoot the large animal. This story argues that the abuse brought upon by Imperialism has taken its toll on the people of Burma and demonstrates how a destructive tyrant empire can cause a colonized and overpowered country to rebel and attack destructively after being oppressed for so long. In this essay, Imperialism serves as the destructive behavior and brutality brought upon a serene labor intended elephant, which symbolizes colonialism. For example, the Burmese people were colonized and abused by Great Britain, that after so many years of torment they became
In "shooting an elephant," Orwell's writes about Burma when it was a British colony.The story told by a first-person narrator who is a British policeman serving in Burma. His relationship with the Burmese natives wasn't that good; he was hated by everyone because he was a foreigner and a authority figure of white English society. The action of the story starts with a rogue elephant that has killed a Burmese man. The narrator finds the elephant standing peacefully in a field. He does not want to kill the elephant, but he knows the large crowd of people who have followed him to the field expect
In “Shooting an Elephant” writer George Orwell illustrates the terrible episode that explains more than just the action of “shooting an elephant.” Orwell describes the scene of the killing of an elephant in Burma and reveals a number of emotions he experienced during the short, but traumatic event. Effectively, the writer uses many literary techniques to plant emotions and create tension in this scene, leading to an ironic presentation of imperialism. With each of the realistic descriptions of the observing multitude and the concrete appeal of the narrator’s pathos, Orwell thrives in persuading the audience that imperialism not only has a destructive impact on those being governed under the imperialists’ oppressive power, but also corrupts
In the essay ?Shooting an Elephant? by George Orwell, the author uses metaphors to represent his feelings on imperialism, the internal conflict between his personal morals, and his duty to his country. Orwell demonstrates his perspectives and feelings about imperialism.and its effects on his duty to the white man?s reputation. He seemingly blends his opinions and subjects into one, making the style of this essay generally very simple but also keeps it strong enough to merit numerous interpretations. Orwell expresses his conflicting views regarding imperialism throughout the essay by using three examples of oppression and by deliberatly using his introspection on imperialism.
"Shooting an Elephant" is perhaps one of the most anthologized essays in the English language. It is a splendid essay and a terrific model for a theme of narration. The point of the story happens very much in our normal life, in fact everyday. People do crazy and sometimes illegal moves to get a certain group or person to finally give them respect. George Orwell describes an internal conflict between his personal morals and his duty to his country to the white man's reputation. The author's purpose is to explain the audience (who is both English and Burmese) about the kind of life he is living in Burma, about the conditions, circumstances he is facing and to tell the British Empire what he think about their imperialism and his growing displeasure for the imperial domination of British Empire.