Analyse af George Orwells essay 'Shooting an Elephant'

”Shooting an elephant” is an essay written by George Orwell and published in 1936. The text is told by a first person narrator, who tells us about being a policeman in Burma and about his doubt, whether to kill an animal or not.

The man who tells us the story is an unhappy young policeman who lives in mental isolation. He hates British imperialism, he hates Burmese natives, and he hates his job. He feels like a target for the Burmese people. The natives are treating him very badly; they are making fun of the white man. They laugh at the protagonist and sneer at him when he passes them. “In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves.” We still don’t get the impression that the narrator hates the natives, we get the feeling that he understand them. He puts himself into the same positions as they are; he is in the same position- also oppressed and hated, but cause by his own nation’s occupation. The Indians are also oppressed by the British and the white man. The story is written in a period where England had colonies all over the world. The British are trying to make an empire far away from home; they conquer other countries and try to assimilate the population to their own rules and traditions. The white man has an thought, that they are the chosen people to civilize primitive races. They are clever, educated, and rich and therefore they feel that they have a duty to help the natives and turn them into people like themselves. Burma, where the story takes place is a buddistic country in south of Asia. In the beginning of the 19th century Burma was occupied by England. The narrator has a very certain attitude towards imperialism. He says it is an evil thing “of course- I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British”. He knows and he can see that every day, that imperialism is about having power, oppressing people and abusing them. He sees the British supremacy as a tyranny and he knows that not only the Burmese people are the target of the imperialism, but he is also a part of it. When you live in a poor country and people from far away arrives and thinks that they have the right to show you how you need to live, and how your society needs to be like, it causes hate and disrespect. The protagonist knows it, and he can in a way understand the Burmese peoples laughing, sneering and bullying. He can understand their anger and that they want to take revenge and fight back the oppressors when they have the possibility. The story-teller is stuck between two evils, he hates the natives, he hates his job and he hates the Empire “All 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.” It is an evil circle because of the poverty and oppressing the imperialism causes, and of course the mutual hate toward the two nations doesn’t make the whole situation better. The narrator realizes that throughout his entire rule in Burma he is actually the victim of the Burmese and the imperialism.