Righteousness And Authority In George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant

In George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, the narrator is the main character of the story trapped in his own environment between righteousness and authority. He is unsure of his path on whether to defend the people of Burma from the oppression of the British ruling in which he serves that can lead him to losing his job as sub-divisional town of Burma, India. Orwell personally relates to the narrator that is reflected in his writing allowing the reader to get a glimpse of his political views. In the short story Orwell like the narrator was an Anglo-Indian official, a term used to describe all British people of mixed Indian and British descent. According to an article from the BBC, Orwell was an imperial police officer in Burma India. He resigned

He couldn’t afford to risk losing his job “I did not know the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that is a great deal younger to supplant it” (149). The Burmese people cannot rely on the British law to keep order; the British Empire enforces the function of their village by brutal force. These people are defenseless. The elephant in the story is a very important figure that symbolizes many concepts. The animal gave the narrator a better glimpse of the real nature of imperialism as he stated in the opening sentence of the second paragraph: “It was a tiny incident in itself, but gave me a better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism- the real motives for which the despotic government act” (149). The narrator uses the term despotic government that means tyrannical ruler, having a few rights and living under fear of the government. The elephant symbolizes hatred of his job. The officer hated the empire abuse of power and the role he has in it. He also hates the Burmese people make his life harder by humiliating him “All I knew was the hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirted little beast who tried to make

Also British industrialized Indian in many ways such as transportation by introducing cars, roads, telephones, and benefited them by brining modern technology and education. Indian had a dependency on British imported goods. Many Indians were not in favor of British polices and so revolted against them. It happened so fast and unexpectedly, we can compare this part of the story to the elephant unexpectedly ravaging the Burman village. The elephant had destructed the majority of the town and killed a villager. The officer knew killing was wrong, it was an animal out of its usual environment and was just scared. The elephant is symbolic in this form destroying the Indian Empire that leads them into poverty and suffrage. It destroyed the town because it was afraid of mistreatment which made it rebellious. The narrator feels that he has been given a performance role because the large crowd of villagers that followed him to see him perform his task. He was pressured into killing the elephant by the people he had control of. “ Here I was, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed crowd- seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind” (152). For the British all of Burma was a valued piece of property. The