Shooting ElephantEssay Preview: Shooting ElephantReport this essayIn the article ÐŽoShooting an Elephant,ÐŽ± Orwell describes his experience of killing an elephant to express the real nature and sorrow of imperialism. He first confesses his bitter life in Moulmein and the baiting by the native people of European. He goes on to narrate a tiny event of shooting an elephant which makes him to realize the real characteristic of imperialism. By reading and thinking this essay in depth, I perceive the main theme the essay is that the real nature of imperialism actually destroys the freedom of everyone, including the governor himself. Literally, the author expresses his notion by using the example of shooting an elephant which is supported by the sentence ÐŽoIt was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism-the real motives for which despotic governments actÐŽ± (Orwell 1). Therefore, I do agree with that the elephant itself symbolizes or be a metaphor to the theme of this essay. For person, I believe that the elephant is the symbol of freedom.
First of all, the elephant which describes in the essay is not a wild one; instead, it is a tame one which used to be chained. This reveals that the freedom of all citizens has been bound by the implementation of imperialism. Also, we can see that at the end of the story, the elephant has been killed by the rifle of author in front of the crowd who follow him. This displays that the freedom of people has been destroyed by the use of imperialism. Moreover, Orwell says that ÐŽoTo come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing-no, that was impossibleÐŽ± (3). This shows the lost of freedom of the governor due to imperialism. Even though he has paramount authority, he still needs to be controlled by the crowd and he is just like ÐŽoÐŽan absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behindÐŽ± (Orwell
, p. 52, p. 60, p. 65, pp. 48-49).
In Orwell’s opinion, the free will of a person is also important in the lives of the person (see the “Freedom to Feel”, p. 54). This fact is a sign that imperialism has been destroying the free will of a person as a means of protecting his or her status and thus of keeping those whom it controls free.
We should also note that while the free will of people of colour has been greatly reduced on the issue of slavery, this seems to have changed. Although the African slaveholding states, and the white European countries which supported them, did not get rid of slave labor, they created an alternative to slavery by banning it, for example, because the African slaveholding states did not want the laws of plantation to protect them. There is also, for example, evidence that the French bourgeoisie was still seeking to get a say in this problem of slavery before the arrival of British colonialists. Indeed, a certain amount of progress had been made against the subject, but so far as is known, some parts of the African continent were not protected under the African Act, the treaty with the British, the slave trade and other colonial policies.
In sum., imperialism has now achieved its goal in the struggle to maintain freedom of movements and in the freedom of people to organize in a free society.
The struggle of democracy
The goal of democracy in general lies in the establishment between the proletariat and the workers (see the “Toward Democracy ” section of the “How to Develop” guide) of class relations and in the class question. It is at this critical moment that democratic societies need to be based on the principle of free unions and that the workers must be given the responsibility of carrying out their own tasks. In the following articles I will analyze this concept from the perspective of those who regard self-organization as an important part of the proletariat’s role.
The Idea of State Sovereignty
In the past socialist parties have expressed a desire to break up the state which is defined by the proletariat as either centralized or subordinate forces. This is of course true and in so far as we see it, the state cannot be destroyed, because it is simply a means of state rule and the state is simply a means of state oppression. But this is not so unless the state itself is destroyed. The state cannot be destroyed by the proletariat, it cannot be destroyed by a single-issue uprising. A revolutionary movement which seeks the overthrow of this centralized social order of domination by a national state must be based almost on the logic of democracy, whereas the state cannot be crushed by the proletariat. In other words, in such an analysis, the proletariat is not acting in the service of the state, while the state is engaged in the struggle against it.
The most important distinction between the state and the proletariat that we shall consider was made on this point by M. Leon Trotsky in his book “The Revolution of the State and the State Party”. Trotsky claimed that under the state, in its capitalist mode of management:
“the proletariat seeks the overthrow of feudal society. . It does not think of itself as a single and self-evident party …. It seeks to crush one class. The dictatorship of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie is only the one safeguard and protection of feudal society… (Lenin, ”