Shooting An Elephant Summary

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The first two paragraphs establishes that in Lower Burma, it’s divided. It’s anti-European in the first paragraph “I was sub-divisional police officer...anti-European feeling was very bitter”. Also in paragraph one “No one had the guts….betel juice over her dress” The people of Burma would see European women and spit at them for simply being European. George being European was treated extremely unfairly as well. “when a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.” The narrator was enlightened because the incident gives him a glimpse of “the real motives for which despotic government act”. Orwell gives visuals all throughout the third and fourth paragraph. At the bottom of the third paragraph Orwell states “It had already destroyed someone’s bamboo hut, killed a cow, and raided some fruit stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal van and, when the driver jumped out and took his heels. had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon. The Burmese sub-inspector and some indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen”. You can vision the …show more content…

He wants to go up the elephant to make sure he behaves and if he does he wanted to wait for the mahout to come back. Even if the elephant becomes agitated Orwell knows he can’t even kill the elephant. Orwell states “But also I knew I was going to do no such thing, I was a poor shot,,,much chance as a toad under a steamroller.” Orwell wasn't going to let anything stop him from getting respect from the natives for his people. “A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of ‘natives’; and so in general, he isn’t frightened”. Orwell states “And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do”. Orwell would rather experience death then get laughed at by over two thousand

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