Summarize: “Shooting an Elephant”, George Orwell

 

In 1936, George Orwell wrote “Shooting an Elephant.” It is a story which made him realize how evil imperialism is. It was an experience that happened to him while he was a policeman in Burma when Burma was a British colony. Being European and a policeman are enough reasons to make the Burmese hate a man. He was living with constant verbal attacks from the natives who only did that when he couldn’t do something about it. But even if he was serving the British imperialism, he secretly hated to be part of it. He hated the oppression and tyranny of it, but he didn’t feel prepared to do something about it, so he was just doing his job. At the same time, even if he secretly supported the natives, he didn’t like them at all, because he had to deal with their hatred. He had an experience which was really important in his life. A tame elephant ran away into the town and went on a rampage. That happened because the elephant had gone “must". The mahout, its trainer, was far away, and Orwell went to investigate because he was a policeman in the town. When he was trying to find it, he found a native killed by the elephant. He asked for an elephant rifle for his protection, but when the natives saw him with the rifle, they followed him, excited to see him shoot the elephant. He found the elephant. It had already calmed down, so he didn’t feel it was right to shoot it anymore. Unfortunately, Orwell felt the natives pressured him to shoot it. He was fighting with himself, because he didn’t want the natives to make fun of him, but at the same time, he didn’t want to shoot the elephant. In the end, he decided to shoot it. Because he didn’t have any experience in shooting elephants, he had to shoot it several times which caused the elephant to die a slow and painful death. Even if some people were upset about the dead elephant because it was really value in that time, finding the dead native was enough excuse to justify the killing and avoid the problems with the owner or other Europeans. But this experience made him realized how the people’s expectation can affect a person behavior. He did what the people expected him to do, even if that was against what he really wanted to do. He described the situation like he lost his freedom to choose and he was just a puppet playing his part. He described it saying about the British oppressors “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it” (Orwell).

 

Work Cited

Orwell, George. "Shooting an Elephant" // George Orwell // Www.k-1.com/Orwell. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/elephant.html>.