Orwell Elephant

3 Pages 772 Words

In George Orwell's short story Shooting an Elephant, he writes about racial prejudice and injustice. Orwell, which is the author’s pen name, (his real name is Eric Arthur Blair,) is a police officer in Moulmein, lower Burma and takes place during the rainy season. Orwell is as much a victim as the people he protects and secretly loves, but because of circumstances he cannot control, he actually becomes part of the vicious cycle he abhors. The author is, "for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British" and “I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear.”(1539) Orwell feels caught in the middle of this cultural struggle. He sympathizes with the oppressed people, secretly feeling that Imperialism is wrong, and yet he is treated poorly by the Burmese, since they perceive him as one of their oppressors. He comes to terms with the role he plays in this vicious cycle of oppression, as an Imperial servant, and the influence it has on him to shoot the elephant.

The Burmese people are treated as second-class citizens in their own country. They are oppressed, by the British Empire, which has invaded their land. Being a police officer, Orwell sees first hand the brutality prisoners experience, "huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scared buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos."(1539) but like so many Europeans he feels helpless to do anything about the atrocities he witnesses. Orwell is not forced to acknowledge these atrocities until he is put into the position to shoot an elephant. After, the elephant kills a native, the Burmese people look for the elephant to be killed. While contemplating on whether to shoot the elephant or not, his motives become personal.

The author views himself as a victim, much the same as the Burmese people he was protecting and becomes pressured into doing what he did not want to do....