In the essay "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell relates his experiences as a British imperial police officer in Burma and the moral dilemma he faced when he was ordered to shoot an elephant that had gone rogue.
Orwell's essay is a reflection on the nature of imperialism and the impact it has on both the colonizers and the colonized. He describes the tension between his personal feelings and his duty as a representative of the British Empire. On the one hand, he feels sympathy for the elephant and recognizes that it is only acting out of instinct and self-preservation. On the other hand, he is aware that if he does not shoot the elephant, he will be seen as weak and ineffective by the Burmese people, who already resent him and his fellow officers as oppressors.
Orwell ultimately decides to shoot the elephant, but he does so with a sense of regret and disgust. He recognizes that the act is a symbol of the larger injustice of imperialism, and that it is not just the elephant that is being killed, but also his own dignity and humanity.
Throughout the essay, Orwell uses vivid imagery and descriptive language to convey the tension and emotions he feels as he grapples with this moral dilemma. He also employs rhetorical devices such as rhetorical questions and repetition to emphasize his point and engage the reader.
Ultimately, "Shooting an Elephant" serves as a powerful critique of imperialism and the ways in which it can corrupt and dehumanize those who are involved in it. It is a poignant reminder of the importance of standing up for one's own principles and values, even in the face of overwhelming pressure to conform.
George Orwell: Shooting an Elephant
Inside George Orwell: A Biography. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. University of Texas Press, Austin. Burmans were bringing das and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. Exhibit 3 above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. Orwells fraser är välkända även för många som aldrig har läst romanen. Minifred har hand om krigen som ständigt rasar.
George Orwell bibliography
It is often easier to make up words of this kind deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth. In addition he wrote book-length investigations of poverty in Britain in the form of Only two compilations of Orwell's body of work were published in his lifetime, but since his death over a dozen collected editions have appeared. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.
Shooting an Elephant
Adoptó el seudónimo de George Orwell en 1933. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native 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. I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943—1944. It made me vaguely uneasy. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
George Orwell
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him. At last, after what seemed a long time — it might have been five seconds, I dare say — he sagged flabbily to his knees. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision.
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell Plot Summary
He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. We reasoned with him. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. It iss not always so — oah, no! In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.
George Orwell: The Sporting Spirit
And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Finding George Orwell in Burma First Americaned. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Colección: Áncora y Delfín. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.
