Shooting An Elephant

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Recommended: Orwell’s essay holds a place as the definitive anti-colonial piece of literature

It was as big as an elephant. I am definite you have heard this many times and perhaps even used it yourself. It is used to normally describe a problem that others or you are in. This is ironic because in the short story Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell, Orwell describes three big problems, and messages that come with imperialism through a story about an elephant. Orwell sees these problems with imperialism. First he points out the hatred it brings upon innocent people. Secondly, he talks about peer pressure and its effects on people. Lastly, he talks about how cruel it was for the people being ruled and how selfish the people were that were ruling. Orwells first messages from the story Shooting an Elephant, is the hatred that it makes …show more content…

As a policeman he is supposed to take care of the people and make sure they are safe and also that the English people living there are safe. One day an elephant who had gotten must, a lack of water that makes them go crazy and ruin everything, is running through the town causing great destruction. Orwell goes to check it out to see if the people are safe. He is going along until he sees that the elephant has killed someone and he gets the nerves and calls for an elephant gun. In doing this he excites all the village people, they are under the impression that he is going to shoot this elephant. Orwell doesn’t want to shoot this magnificent creature, but when he finds it, he had no other choice. “I was not thinking of my own skin, only the watchful yellow faces behind”. Orwell is so worried about what the people are going to think that he ignores what he thinks and kills the elephant anyway. Why he was worried about the opinion of the people that hate him? I don’t know. It happens all the time though; even in modern society we bend to the people we despise the most. People are funny in that sense. Orwell is telling us the great pressure that we will all fill in our life sooner or later, and he is trying to give us courage to follow our hearts, because they know what’s best a majority of the

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