Shooting An Elephant

1 Pages 289 Words

Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was an interesting peace to read. I thought that it was very descriptive and a good story. I thought that the moral of the story fits well into today’s society. It sounded like the only reason the man shot the elephant was to uphold is image for the natives. “To come all this way with rifle in hand … having done nothing – no, that is impossible. The crowed would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the east, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.” I got from this was that he had to shoot the elephant because he came all this way with his rifle and there was no backing out now or he was loose respect and show that he is weak to the natives.
I have seen this in today’s society with people doing things that they know is not right or not good for them just to fit in or have a certain group like them. I thought a very good example of this was smoking. Everyone knows that it is bad for them, but they still do it. Some people do it just to look cool or to fit in. People in gangs do things that are bad so people will be afraid or “not mess with them”.
I thought that the last paragraph was ironic because of how he did not want to shoot the elephant when he did; the elephant had a long miserable death. I think it was hard for the guy to watch the elephant die like that. He did everything he could to try to kill the elephant as fast a possible but nothing worked....