George
Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell
places the
reader inside the head of a young subdivisional police in Moulmein,
Burma. He
clearly tells the reader he hates his job, the British Empire, and the
Buddhist
priests’ behavior there. However one day, the young officer gets a call
at the
police station from the sub-inspector saying that a tame elephant was
wreaking
havoc in the village. Feeling obligated by his sense of duty, the
police
officer goes out on his pony to investigate the situation. At first, he
is led
on a wild goose chase but then; the officer finds a dead Indian man in
the mud
who was trampled by the “must” elephant. Overwhelmed, the officer calls
for
help to tend to the descended and to have a gun brought to him.
As the officer goes out to
kill the elephant, close to two thousand Burmans follow him to watch
him do so.
When the young officer finds the “must” giant, it is cleaning the grass
and
eating it. There, George Orwell creates an internal conflict with the
officer
by having him choose between killing the elephant and leaving it to be
dealt
with its owner. To the reader, the whole battle is as if it was a
criminal
trial with a murderer found guilty and the jury is given the choice to
either
hand down the death penalty or life in prison.
After much
debate, the soldier shoots the
elephant five times and kills it. Soon, the Burmans treat him like a
hero and
the Europeans are divided on the topic. The soldier in the end feels
glad he
shot the elephant. After reading the story and reflecting on it, I came
to see
relationship between the elephant and the British officer as a symbol
of
imperialism. The elephant symbolizes the weak people trying to break
free
through revolution and the officer symbolizes the mighty empire trying
to stay in
control. Further proof of this is the lack of concern for human life by
some in
the quote "the younger men said it was
a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an
elephant was
worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very
glad that
the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave
me a
sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant.”
In my mind, I see the empire’s
struggle to stay in
power and save face even when it comes to taking the life of the
people, while
the people were tired of being powerless and were fighting for freedom
from a
tyrant.
