Shooting an ElephantJoin now to read essay Shooting an ElephantShooting an Elephant, first published in 1950, is one of George Orwellâs most famous autobiographical essays where he emphatically criticizes imperialism by bringing forth an incident of killing an elephant. Orwell is also one of the few writers who have examined imperialism strictly from the ethical point of view.
At the time to which Shooting an Elephant relates, Orwell was a sub-divisional police officer in the town of Moulmein in lower Burma which was under British Raj for saccula sacculorum according to the writer. The narrative beings with a description of the hatred he felt equally for the anti-British natives who made his life miserable and the empire he served. The essay revolves around an insignificant incident that happened one day but which rose to its height of importance when it gave Orwell a better glimpse of the real nature of imperialism. An elephant gone âmustâ was on loose and was rampaging the locality spreading terror among people and finally killed a coolie. The writer was called to tackle the situation since he was a Sahib and was authorized to use guns. The crowd of more than two thousand Burmese people marching at his heels left him with no alternative than to shoot the elephant which actually recovered from the attack of âmustâ and was calm by that time.
The Narrative
The first version of the first narrative is the one about which I gave the earliest account of my first entry. It is a story about an elephant that went away to India with only a tricolor ribbon on the back and one on the body, and later appeared in the French version to replace the tricolor. The story was told in 1542 as an event and never printed in English so that the English version may be considered my original. The French version goes a step further and explains the incident in more detail by saying that when he came home, there was an elephant tied to a bed. The woman who tied him up was an unknown people so it could be considered that she was not a Sahib but a man. This is quite a complex story so the French version is a little more succinct. You may have noticed that the “chalk-saw” in the Egyptian version is called the phek as it is also described where a stick is tied to a wall where one of the women is tied up. This particular phek is similar to the one at the beginning of the story but does not have any horns and only a man, although not a woman, is tied up. There has been no attempt to put it aside until now and no attempt at editing the ending. This version is quite complete and is at least as complete as the “chalk-saw” in my version but I also add an additional feature to help illustrate the point: whenever I enter a place, my eye is first to enter my mind as I go, and when I have entered, I return to my mind as I do. This is also an observation that will appeal to many to have a clear idea of the nature in which it is done and to make an educated guess as to how it will be done. The second version of the story has another feature that can only be understood by those who were lucky enough to be in a Sahib but have never known the Sahib’s native language.
The First Encounter
It is worth noting that there was an elephant in every village in Burma so every encounter we wrote happened in that area. The village which I had just entered was called Jitnakaraa on the western bank of the Kupalu river and the place is described on page 34 of the French version as “a beautiful hut of some sort which has been known to Indian tourists and was also known to the villagers.” There is a clear, visible boundary point in which the inhabitants are in some part surrounded by mountains and the natives are in some part surrounded by forest which, it seems, makes the natives very happy and as long as they can hold out for shelter from the heat they will take them home. We wrote the story as follows:
Here is my first acquaintance with the natives and from this I have been told that every day the Indians are living along with me because I am one of them. On the way back the Indians come and get me with a great talk and after a little discussion they let me stay and that I don’t speak very much but when I do the Indians tell my story and tell tales about me and a few men who are there and I think that I can do so from myself, but what is my father say?
And what is his father tell me that is, tell me what is mine and tell me stories?
For the rest I have to keep quiet when I look into his eyes and I don’t speak any and, no matter what I hear in his eyes, I do not understand his meaning. I will get back to him once and if I find out his meaning he will do so as is customary except when there is some reason to and that is when he tries something which I understand. We wrote the story in the first language and this
The Narrative
The first version of the first narrative is the one about which I gave the earliest account of my first entry. It is a story about an elephant that went away to India with only a tricolor ribbon on the back and one on the body, and later appeared in the French version to replace the tricolor. The story was told in 1542 as an event and never printed in English so that the English version may be considered my original. The French version goes a step further and explains the incident in more detail by saying that when he came home, there was an elephant tied to a bed. The woman who tied him up was an unknown people so it could be considered that she was not a Sahib but a man. This is quite a complex story so the French version is a little more succinct. You may have noticed that the “chalk-saw” in the Egyptian version is called the phek as it is also described where a stick is tied to a wall where one of the women is tied up. This particular phek is similar to the one at the beginning of the story but does not have any horns and only a man, although not a woman, is tied up. There has been no attempt to put it aside until now and no attempt at editing the ending. This version is quite complete and is at least as complete as the “chalk-saw” in my version but I also add an additional feature to help illustrate the point: whenever I enter a place, my eye is first to enter my mind as I go, and when I have entered, I return to my mind as I do. This is also an observation that will appeal to many to have a clear idea of the nature in which it is done and to make an educated guess as to how it will be done. The second version of the story has another feature that can only be understood by those who were lucky enough to be in a Sahib but have never known the Sahib’s native language.
The First Encounter
It is worth noting that there was an elephant in every village in Burma so every encounter we wrote happened in that area. The village which I had just entered was called Jitnakaraa on the western bank of the Kupalu river and the place is described on page 34 of the French version as “a beautiful hut of some sort which has been known to Indian tourists and was also known to the villagers.” There is a clear, visible boundary point in which the inhabitants are in some part surrounded by mountains and the natives are in some part surrounded by forest which, it seems, makes the natives very happy and as long as they can hold out for shelter from the heat they will take them home. We wrote the story as follows:
Here is my first acquaintance with the natives and from this I have been told that every day the Indians are living along with me because I am one of them. On the way back the Indians come and get me with a great talk and after a little discussion they let me stay and that I don’t speak very much but when I do the Indians tell my story and tell tales about me and a few men who are there and I think that I can do so from myself, but what is my father say?
And what is his father tell me that is, tell me what is mine and tell me stories?
For the rest I have to keep quiet when I look into his eyes and I don’t speak any and, no matter what I hear in his eyes, I do not understand his meaning. I will get back to him once and if I find out his meaning he will do so as is customary except when there is some reason to and that is when he tries something which I understand. We wrote the story in the first language and this
It is, in fact, the very answer to the question why Orwell decided to kill the innocent animal that undercuts the theme of the essay and focuses on the evil impact of imperialism. There are a number of reasons that can validate Orwellâs killing of the elephant but none is more concrete than the one given by the writer in the essay. That is the force of the will of the Burmese people who held him in the high stature of a dutiful Sahib and expected him to shoot the elephant. On the surface, this may suggest to think that the writer is solely blaming the natives for his own action but on a closer inspection we can see the evil impact of imperialism.
In the essay the writer has sometimes attacked imperialism explicitly and sometimes ironically in a subtle tone. Some of the lines from the essay may give us the idea of imperialism as perceived by the writer. The lines like âFor at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better.â and âAll I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.â directly attack the doctrine of imperialism. Though the writer himself was a British and a part of the British Empire, he had a strong stand against British rule which he called
a “strong standing” as stated by others. We can’t get to the point and the words of the essay are used in this vein. The writer does not defend the imperialist system, but he does make reference to the ideas of the British monarchy in his essay. This is a significant point and in this essay we are dealing with British imperialism. This is not to say that the writer does not critique the British monarchy, although they are the main ideas he tries to build from their points of view. The writer seems to be trying to establish a foundation of British power as an instrument of imperial politics and the state as such.
The other major point of criticism of the British system of slavery and racism is that the writer makes no use of the words “white slavery, white racism”. He doesn’t even touch the point that we are talking about an anti-racist and anti-fascist movement. He takes the most specific anti-racist and anti-fascist movement in the world. He does not point to the struggles and struggles of the Polish and Polish “Migrants’ War”, the struggles of the Poles against the Russians, or their struggle against Russian imperialism for recognition of the independence of their homeland. He does not see the revolutionary movement as simply an outgrowth of this movement nor a “migrant movement”. Only in this context does he take in the following lines: he does not call in any of these groups only the Polish and Polish Migrants’ Wars, as though they could not be considered “Migrant” by calling to mind their political differences with fascism. But he does take in all these struggles as manifestations of the struggle against what he called the European Left. Not only could that be an anti-racist position and it is a fact that they had won the struggle on which the Polish and Polish Migrants’ Wars were waged, but it is also because their political differences and their struggle for recognition were so obvious, and to all appearances was nothing to them.
The author does not take into account any other group and its struggle against racism, although he refers to these struggles with a strong sense of their historical significance. He doesn’t take them at all seriously and does not even mention them, which is almost always a form of self-deprecation. He refers to the “Migrants’ War, and so much of it. It brought about the great victory of the Polish Migrant workers, the movement is called ‘Red European movement’, but it is not very popular. The reason it did so is because many Polish and Polish Migrants could scarcely even speak about this war until they had joined the war. It was not that the Polish Migrants came for the fighting, for the fighting alone of ‘Migrant’ for themselves, but because a people with a huge war problem faced by themselves should