George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant"
In 'Shooting an Elephant,' George Orwell finds himself in a difficult situation
involving an elephant. The fate of the elephant lies in his hands. Only he can
make the final decision. In the end, due to Orwell's decision, the elephant lay
dying in a pool of blood. Orwell wins the sympathy of readers by expressing the
pressure he feels as an Anglo-Indian in Burma, struggling with his morals, and
showing a sense of compassion for the dying animal.
Readers sympathize with Orwell because they can relate to his emotions in the
moments before the shooting. Being the white ?leader,? he should have been able
to make an independent decision, but was influenced by the ?natives? (Orwell
101). Orwell describes his feelings about being pressured to shoot the
elephant: ?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
(101). Everyone has been in a situation in which he or she has been expected to
be a leader. For different reasons people are looked to as leaders, sometimes
because of their race, ethnicity, or heritage. In this case, Orwell was
pictured as a leader because he was British and he worked for the British Empire.
Readers are able to relate to the fact that he does not want to be humiliated
in front of the Burmese. He declares, ?Every white man'...
Dr. Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps she was faced with the brutality of racial discrimination, and a very traumatic incident where she, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was eight, but because of this she also developed an unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family. (Angelou)This shaped her poetry and her involvement in the arts. Where she began to sing and dance and planned to audition in professional theater but that didn’t work out well because she began working as a nightclub waitress, tangled with drugs and prostitution and danced in a strip club. In 1959, she moved to New York, became friends with prominent Harlem writers, and got involved with the civil rights movement. In 1961, she moved to Egypt with a boyfriend and edited for the Arab Observer. When she returned to the U.S., she began publishing her multivolume autobiography, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as well as several books of poetry and the third being Still I Rise in published in 1978. (Maya Angelou is born) Because of this life of hardship shaped her to who she is and was the inspiration for a lot of her poetry.
Maya Angelou is one of the well-respected African-American women figures. Maya is a poet, actress, civil right activist, dancer, singer, writer, educator, and a director. Maya’s real name is Marguerite Johnson. Maya was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Maya’s parents divorced when she was three. She was sent to live with her brother and grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. She was very close to her brother Bailey and her brother named her Maya. When she lived in Arkansas, she experienced discrimination towards African-American. At the age of seven Maya was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend. “She only told her brother,” but a few days later her uncle has murdered the man who assaulted her. She thought her words have killed
This literary critique was found on the Bryant Library database. It talks about how well Maya conveys her message to her readers as well as portraying vivid scenes in her reader’s minds’. Maya’s sense of story and her passionate desire to overcome obstacles and strive for greatness and self-appreciation is what makes Maya an outlier. Living in America, Angelou believed that African American as a whole must find emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sustenance through reverting back to their “home” of Africa. According to Maya, “Home” was the best place to capture a sense of family, past, and tradition. When it comes to Maya’s works of literature, her novels seems to be more critically acclaimed then her poetry. With that being said, Angelou pursues harsh social and political issues involving African American in her poems. Some of these themes are the struggle for civil rights in America and Africa, the feminist movement, Maya’s relationship with her son, and her awareness of the difficulties of living in America's struggling classes. Nevertheless, in all of Maya’s works of literature she is able to “harness the power of the word” through an extraordinary understanding of the language and events she uses and went through. Reading this critique made me have a better understanding of the process Maya went through in order to illustrate her life to her readers. It was not just sitting down with a pen and paper and just writing thoughts down. It was really, Maya being able to perfect something that she c...
Born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri Maya Angelou later changed her name to promote her writing. Maya- represents the childhood name her brother Bailey gave her and Angelou is a variation of her married last name. At the age of three her parents divorced and sent her and her younger brother Bailey to live with their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. When she was seven years old she moved to Chicago to live with her mother and encountered one of the most traumatic experiences of her life. When Maya was eight years old she was sexually assaulted and the man that assaulted her is murdered. This leads to a four year period of Maya only speaking to her brother Bailey. After the attack Maya and Bailey move back to Stamps, Arkansas. In 1940, Maya moves to California to live with her mother. She drops out of high school three years later to become the first black cable conductor in San Francisco. A year later she goes back to school, graduates and later gives birth to her son Guy. Angelou is a single mother until she marries Tosh Angelos. (Shapiro; 1994).
The Elephant is something to marvel at there is no animal quite like them. Between its shear size (the largest terrestrial mammal alive today), the familiar emotions they share with humans such as mourning for their dead, or their unique features like their large trunks, tusks, and ears, there is nothing that compares. These are some reasons why this large beautiful animal should not be taken for granted in today’s society. Unfortunately they have been between the illegal poaching for ivory, human elephant conflict regarding land usage, and environmental factors; they have become endangered.
In Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, the character Gregor transforms from a man into a bug, specifically a cockroach. Although Gregor physically changes, he does not change as a person. Gregor merely accepts his new condition as a bug and his family’s continuous abuse and hostility. Gregor’s acceptance of his new bug form is representative of his passive personality before and after his transformation. Gregor’s passivity, in response to the hostile world around him, causes his eventual downfall. Therefore, Kafka uses the character Gregor to exemplify how a passive attitude can cause one’s demise.
When first reading a story about a family, the reader typically thinks of the perfect usually family that is portrayed in many movies and television shows to come. The father works and loves his family, the mother is a stay-at-home mom and takes care of the whole family, the son goes to college to make a life for himself, and the daughter goes to school and excels in everything she does. In the short novel The Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka, the family is not portrayed in this way. The father stays at home and is abusive not only physically but emotionally as well, the mother does stay home but only to take care of the father, their son Gregor is the breadwinner of the family but he has no say in anything, and the daughter Grette stays in her room to avoid trouble. Kafka wrote all of his stories to express his emotions, but The Metamorphosis expressed it on a whole new level by
Maya Angelou’s life began in the small town of Stamps. At the age of three Maya and her Brother, Bailey, were dropped off at their grandmother’s house in Stamps by their parents. Maya lived her life as a store helper to her grandmother, Momma, and her uncle Willie. Her childhood was occupied by managing the store, going to school, and participating in cultural events. Maya’s went through many obstacles in her childhood such as the rape, desertion, and self discovery. Maya uses her relationships with other people to help her overcome the obstacles in her life.
Gregor Samsa’s mother, whose name is never revealed, is a physically and constitutionally weak woman. She cares dearly for Gregor which is first shown by her distress as Gregor does not wake up at his usual time. It is evident that Gregor’s mother has the hardest time coping with his transformation. She can not bear to lay eyes upon Gregor. Though she has trouble adjusting, she doesn’t stop loving her only son. As Gregor’s mother and sister begin to move furniture out of his room, his mother stops to contemplate whether this is the right course of action. As Sheldon Goldfarb states in his critical essay, “When his mother and sister start removing his furniture, his mother's second thoughts provoke him to resist: he does not want to give up his human past and the possibility of returning to it” (Goldfarb). On the outside, Gregor’s mother reacts with repulsion at the sight of the bug, but on the inside still cares deeply about her son underneath. Gregor is able to see this and it gives him new hope.
...e disappeared and they now know nothing but the mask they wore to keep the natives happy. In the end the elephant wouldn't die so easily, just like oppressed countries will not die so easily to their oppressors. The oppressors must give themselves up to, “avoid looking like a fool”(699).
"The Elephant Whisperer: The Story of Lawrence Anthony and the Elephants Who Never Forgot." The Featured Creature. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2013.
Kafka uses the symbol of doors to demonstrate how his family cuts him off when he is no longer a human and the no longer
An elephant may seem to be a silly topic to be writing an honors thesis over. To a lot of people the elephant is a mammal they can only find at the zoo or in a circus. It is not something to be treasured and loved. It is a machine to move logs across the country or to fight wars. It is something to stare at in adoration and wonder. It is something they never touch. They might as well just be something of fairy tales and stories. The truth about elephants is that they are truly magical creatures that are of fairy tales and stories. They are creatures who have been on Earth for millions of years. They lived when dinosaurs still walked the Earth and continue to survive even today. People need to understand the importance of these remarkable creatures. They also need to understand the value that these animals play with thousands of peoples lives, including my own. They portray a symbol of strength, hope, knowledge and thousands of other things. They have been depicted in gods and religions. Most importantly, to me they are a symbol of love and adoration. They remind me of a time when my father was still with me. This is why I am writing my thesis. I plan to discuss the importance of elephants to many different religions and cultures.
But don't get angry on anything and everything. When you get angry, choose to let it off, take a few breaths, or countdown to ten, or analyse why you are upset. Realizing that you are caught with anger is the right way to begin to deal with it. All your anger is about something what has happened in the past or will happen in the future and not what is happening in the present moment. So if you can be in the present moment you cannot hold on to anger for long. So be in the present moment to avoid holding on to anger. Physical exercises can relieve your
Shooting an Elephant” is an autobiographically influenced short story written by George Orwell and published in 1936. It deals with the inner conflict of an imperial police officer in Burma who feels pressured by the Burmese and forced to kill an outraged elephant in order to prove himself and his status as an imperial police officer.