Essays on Shooting An Elephant

Shooting an Elephant- Response Essay

Introduction George Orwell’s -- Shooting an Elephant provides an insight into one day experience of George Orwell as a young British policeman working for Indian Imperial Police in Burma. I was interested in Orwell’s work as it provides a look into the moral conscience of an individual deciding to either kill an elephant or let it live. The story makes me think how taking a life can be emotionally challenging for an individual, even though it can be legal and part of your job. After discovering that an elephant had gone must and finding the elephant in ...

Response #1

Giddings, Franklin. The Relation of the Criminal to Society. Proceedings of the Academy of

Political Science in the City of New York 1(4), 1911, 559-62.

This article asserts that some of the acts that the legislature defines as crimes are not actions that can cause much harm to the society and future generations, but there are acts that are defined as crimes that pose grave dangerous. Accordingly, the author notes that if one assumes that every person who commits a crime is a criminal then it is hard to find a person who is not a criminal in the United States. In this regard, the article presents two kinds of ‘ ...

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell

The novel Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is a persuasive rhetorical story regarding his own experiences at the time he served as a sub-divisional police officer in charge of a town in Burma during the period when Britain was exercising imperialism over other countries. As the person exercising authority on behalf of the Crown, the narrator learns of an elephant that is wreaking havoc at a market and immediately goes to the scene prepared to manage the situation. Once at the scene, he realizes that if he does not manage to kill the elephant the public will make ...

It is not easy to please everyone at all times. Sometimes the people around a person and the society places enormous pressure to conform and fit into the norms and traditions followed by them that an individual has to compromise his or her beliefs and ideals just to fit in and to be accepted. Fitting in could sometimes involve proving that a person is manly enough, subscribes to certain religious beliefs and does things that do not stand out from the rest of the community. Compromise and ‘fitting in’ is a theme that is discussed by George Orwell in ...

“Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule (Jurgen 16).” Apart from the economic and political incentives, race too played an important role in the colonization process. It was the feeling of superiority and the need to enforce it ...

The two short stories "The Cask of the Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe and "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell depict psychological portraits of the protagonists’ criminal behavior. However, while both characters commit a crime, their motives, as well as the patterns of thinking and behavior are absolutely different. Montresor, the protagonist of “The Cask of the Amontillado”, commits a murder as a revenge that is a result of his pride and jealousy to his victim Fortunato. Montresor is portrayed as a criminal, who is so absorbed with the revenge that he does not mention why exactly he retaliates. ...

Literature is one of the most useful sources of knowledge for human nature. The history of literature contains several seminal works that aid in the transformation of the human psyche and worldview. Readings like Machiavelli’s The Prince, George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant and Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr. are very famous works that have got immortalized in the minds of the avid readers all across the world. I value the readings because it gives me a sense of how others in the world analyze things and helps me to be more open-minded to new ...

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Analysis and Interpretation of “Shooting an Elephant”

“Shooting an Elephant” is an essay by George Orwell. It recounts his incredible experiences in India where he served as an imperial officer. Orwell appears to be narrating a tale on his individual life experience in Burma; however, the real theme behind his essay is to create an image of how colonialism influences the way of life of both the inhabitants in the colonized nation and the imperialistic officers. This essay expounds on how Orwell, through a broad utilization of symbolism, uses his actions and an elephant in a journey to depict ...

George Orwell is one of the greatest English writers. Orwell expressed his views in an independent manner and raised various significant issues that he witnessed in the society while serving in different roles. “Shooting an Elephant” is one of highly acclaimed literary works of the author. “Animal Farm” is a novel that was written by Orwell and is known for the portrayal of various crucial issues. This paper intends to discuss both of these literary works of the author along with presenting a succinct and comparative analysis of “Shooting an Elephant” and “Animal Farm”. Both “Shooting an Elephant” and “Animal ...

There are some choices that one is forced to do and live with. In George Orwell’s essay “shooting an elephant,” he recounts some life event when he was forced to choose between two evils. Several years later this episode still haunts George. This story takes place during five unhappy years of the writer. He hates his life and when a dilemma faces him, he is forced to kill a valuable animal at work in order to save his pride. In his own thinking, George is justified in killing the animal. His character in the essay has been demonstrated as one ...

Introduction

“Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell was recognized by the literary magazine in 1936 even though with no conclusive evidence of whether it was fact or fiction. All in all, the essay serves its purpose in literature which is to question our morality every time from that of our counterparts who may include peers, family or colleagues. The text emphasizes that social pressure and the feelings of belongingness are major predictors of our actions in our day to day lives (Orwell and Jeremy, 36-41). In his essay, Orwell narrated his story with a sense of comparison and analogy to how ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

Shooting an Elephant Any piece of literature is better understood and better enjoyed, when the reader takes the effort to analyze its elemental components. The aim of this essay is to analyze the essay, ‘Shooting an Elephant’ by George Orwell, and understand the author’s usage of ethos, pathos and logos appeal to convey his theme. The essay describes how a European, posted as a police officer in Burma, during the British imperial rule, killed an elephant which was acting wild. The essay dwells more about the reasons that led to the shooting of that great beast, rather than dwelling ...

Introduction

My life in the simple village in the state of California began from the most humble and captivating beginning. It happens by the wonders and the alignment of nature to have been brought up by two humble parents in the middleclass economic status in the country social class. The challenges that were presented by the epitome of the challenging issues of life led to the paradigms which posed a challenge to our up comings in the social arena. The life in the Californian village remains an autobiography visible to the general society on which it poses a great overview in ...

George Orwell’s short story “Shooting an Elephant” provides quite a good analysis of the actions of the man who is torn between conflicting feelings and has to make an important decision in front of a big amount of people. The main character of the story works in Burma as a police officer. What is important to know as a background here is the political situation in Burma in the beginning of the 20th century. In the previous century during 62 years Britain Empire did not cease its attempts to conquer Burma, finally making it a part of the Indian Empire that was controlled ...

Imperialism is the domination by a stronger group of a weaker group’s territory, customs, values, laws and institution (Hobson 44). The imperialists change the way of life of the conquered people to an extent that the conquered lose almost every aspect of their indigenous way of life. The people mostly associated with this concept are the western Europeans and especially the British. Imperialism has been seen to have far more negative effects on both the conquered and the imperialists. This has been demonstrated by George Orwell’s essays. George Orwell was an imperial police man in Burma. His writings ...

The suffering of others can take its toll on everyone involved - both the oppressed and the oppressor. In Martin Luther King's essay "Three Ways of Meeting Oppression," King notes that people can be disheartened by oppression, but they must not let these hardships get them down. The perseverance of this oppressed person that King describes can also be found in the elephant of George Orwell's short story "Shooting an Elephant." In this story, we see an elephant refusing to die, even as the reluctant police officer continues to shoot it. This is representative of the oppressed peoples' refusal ...

“Living Like Weasels” – Annie Dillard

A Rhetorical Analysis Both these pieces of writing centre around an encounter with an animal, but in each case the author’s real purpose is slightly different than to merely describe their encounters with an elephant, in Orwell’s case, and a weasel, in Dillard’s. Orwell’s true purpose, apart from the inevitable element of self-revelation, which any non-fictional account will probably entail, is to create pathos in the reader, faced with the description of the shooting of the elephant, and to point out the invidious effects of imperialism. Similarly, Dillard’s piece is, in a real sense, not ...

‘The Hanging’ (1931)

‘Shooting an Elephant’ (1936)

‘Why I Write’ (1946)

Having read these three essays by Orwell and noting the dates they were published, I would have to say that what is important to Orwell does change to a certain extent, but some important things remain constant. The main thing that changes is his political awareness. In ‘Why I Write’ he states that.

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

He makes clear that his experiences as a police officer in Burma and his subsequent experiences of ...