Response to "Shooting an Elephant"

                George Orwell’s essay Shooting an Elephant left me with an impression of pity for Orwell and his easily manipulated role in society. As a police officer, he should have more authority and presence, but as a British police officer amongst the Burmese population, he is more like a puppet or a dummy. He is supposed to be able to use his own judgment and intuition to deal with cases, yet he is just jerked around by the mass, giving them what they want instead of doing what’s actually right. This selfish move allows him to save his own face and hopefully rack up brownie points with the people that don’t like him, the Burmese. He tries appeal to his guilty conscience that he did the right thing by pointing out that the elephant did kill a man, even if it’s a man with absolutely no social status. As a reader, I can see where he is coming from. Peer pressure is a very strong manipulator and can seize total control of the situation no matter how wrong the manipulators are.

                Orwell uses a first person perspective to tell this story. He has a plot and uses transitions very well. I feel like there is a very natural division to this essay. I have divided them up into 3 sections and named them The External Conflict, The Internal Conflict and The Consequences. The first section starts at paragraph 5, where the narrator had been focusing on Burma, its people and how they feel about him.  He narrates the events and panics of Burma. These deal with the outside events that occur in Burma. They are ultimately more narrative and informative than personal. His thoughts concerning the elephant were that of a third person. The second section is when the personal things come in. Orwell begins it by sudden decision to not shoot the elephant. This indicates a transition from the impersonal to the more private, personal view. He uses his emotions and decisions to tell the story. The end of paragraph 11 describes the elephant’s fall. As it transfers from section 2 to 3, paragraph 12 begins by the aftermath of the actual shooting of the elephant. It sums up the events that occurred after the shooting.

Orwell shoots the elephant out of peer pressure. He is the misfit amongst the Burmese, and he wants to win the crowd’s approval. If the crowd wants him to put on a show and shoot the elephant, he will do it, even if it is against his wishes. Orwell also uses the anecdote of his shooting to illustrate his hatred towards imperialism. According to dictionary.com, imperialism is “the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.” Just like the Burmese were forced under imperialistic rule and suppressed by it, Orwell was forced to shoot the elephant under the crowd’s influence. Imperialism gives the parent country power to do whatever it wishes to the country under it, similar to Orwell’s situation with his rifle. It shows the power struggle between the one with the power and the influential mass. The rifle alone has the freedom to just be, living in harmony with everything else and deciding its own fate. However, once the rifle falls into the wrong hands, it can only do what the hands will it to do.