Shooting an elephant

In this essay, my thesis that I am going to elaborate is: Orwell accuses the empire of inequity and a scathing comment on the nefarious way imperialism dehumanizes the conqueror as much as it does the conquered. The nom de plume of the writer Eric Arthur Blair, is George Orwell, an English author, who was born in India, at the time when it was a British colony. Throughout Orwell’s life, he lived in India, Burma and England, and these places have inspired his writing. Today, he is known for his dystopian novels, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal farm, which explore themes like absolute despotism and disparity in the society. The story” Shooting an Elephant” is inspired of Orwell’s experience as a police officer in Burma, where he describes his experience with an uncontrollable and deterministic elephant. The narrator did not want to shoot the elephant, but he felt he had to do it, because by the will of the submissive Burmese people to bring about redemption of the people.

The message in the story, as an anti-imperialist, Orwell lets the narrator unequivocally declare his opposition to the colonial power of Britain. “for at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was of evil. I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British.” Captured by the situation, he adds that, “one thing I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served. In reality, I was just an absurd puppet being dragged back and forth by the will of the yellow faces behind.” The narrator realizes that being forced to shoot the elephant illustrates the inherent problem of hegemony. “when the white man becomes a tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys” Besides the indictment of the end of imperialism, ironically it also appeals to the English to cease to be a colonial power in order to preserve their own freedom.