Shooting an Elephant
Author: George Orwell
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In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. 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. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
sets the tone for the essay of Orwell’s negative feelings towards his circumstances and job
Orwell states that a vast amount of people hated him and that this was the only time he was important enough to be hated. Usually, when you are important, you aren’t hated.
in the sense that he frames a negative thing, being hated by large groups of people, as something positive because it made him well known/important
The narrator clearly states that he is hated by large amounts of people, but then follows this statement up by saying he was important. When a person is important, it usually means that they are well liked. In this case, the narrator clearly says the opposite of what he really means.
Although Orwell is talking about the way he was negatively perceived, his tone reflects a feeling of annoyance more than anything else.
He has a very negative tone, and he tries to get the audience to feel sorry for him.
“aimless, petty…” These words reveal his contempt for the Burmese people. He doesn’t show any effort to see their side.
So the people who hate him are willing to commit acts of protest against him, but they won’t do something as drastic as start a riot.
Orwell’s tone and the way he delivered this sentence shows the irony in European society, how many have the courage and are brave enough to disown women, but aren’t brave enough to start a riot.
This police officer should have been a force that no one would have messed with, and everyone would respect, but he definitely wasn’t.
By Orwell describing laughter as hideous, he is combatting the generally positive connotation of laughing by putting the word hideous in front of it
In this sentence he uses words like “nimble” and “hideous” to get the audience to feel sorry for himself, and go into detail on how much of a target he was to people by being a police officer. He goes on to talk about how this happened to him more than once. Once again going into detail on how he is targeted.
Hideous laughter
Laughter isn’t thought of as hideous
Orwell used specific details about the crowd and how they were insulting him and described how unsafe he felt to further express his emotions.
It is seen through Orwell’s word choice that he is annoyed by the people’s insults and shenanigans. He used words like ‘sneering’ and ‘yellow’ to describe the men who insulted him. Generally, these words have a negative connotation.
This sentence is full of negative diction. “Sneering” “Insults” “Badly”
There are two qualifiers use in this sentence. “Sneering” and “Yellow.”These two qualifiers imply the narrators hatred of how he is treated by the Burmese people. These qualifiers are used to insult the young men of the village.
We see priests as the accepting, and generous kind of people who would never insult anyone. In this essay, Orwell points out that the priests were the worst ones among the Burma people when it came to insulting Europeans.
This is ironic because you’d expect priests to be kind and welcoming instead of “the worst of all.”
You would think that the Buddhist priests would not be the ones to cause a scene when seeing Europeans because they are priests, but they do exactly that.
This is ironic because you expect Buddhist priests to be kind and warm-hearted instead of the “worst of all.”
Priests are usually thought to be good so by saying they were the worst of all.
This is intentional, particularly around the word jeer, to convey a sense of hatred among the Burmese people of the British guards.
It is interesting how he includes the detail about the young Budhist priests. This is not only interesting selection of detail, but is also an example of situational irony. Priests are supposed to be the kindest out of everyone in the town, yet they are just as mean towards the police officer as the rest of the people.
All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. 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. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.
lots of detail of the gruesome conditions of the prisoners; incites empathy, contrasted with his hatred for the people of the country
I would say this is intentional diction because by saying perplexing and upsetting it shows he feels confused and then upset also setting a tone.
This is ironic because he is calling the imperialism “evil,” yet he still works for them at his job.
With a mix of Orwell’s semi-casual tone and negative words like “evil”, reveals Orwell’s opinion of the British empire
The word “Chucked” shows a sense of revulsion towards his job, and that he would toss it in a heart beat.
When Orwell uses these hyphens, he is trying to join the idea of doing something secretly and theoretically. He makes it known that he is obviously in favor of the Burmese, but it is something that is not known to most people, the hyphen helps bring out this idea.
In the beginning of the essay we see that the Europeans are the oppressors of the Burma people. Though Orwell was from Britain, he was against the oppressors but was still berated for being European.
Because he hates the Burmese and is a police officer for the British empire, you’d expect him to be a supporter of Britain. He actually hates the crown just as much as the Burmese, however.
Orwell is caught between a rock and a hard place; although he personally believes that imperialism is a great and oppressive evil, his role as a colonial police officer, the one who enforces this evil, prevents him from standing up for his beliefs He is forced to take part in the oppression of a people he believes should be free.
Although Orwell was working for the British empire as a police officer, he was not on the side of the British.
It’s ironic how he is trying to help the Burmese people against imperialism even though he is working as a police officer. The other aspect of irony in this statement is that he is trying to help people fight against the common enemy and yet they hate him anyway.
It is ironic that he is “all for” the Burmese, when they insult and jeer at him everyday.
the “and secretly, of course” is worded in a way that is almost a smart comment giving a tone of a little of sarcasm.
he understands the amount of irony that comes in this situation.
This police officer basically shows us that he has to suffer in silence. All of the people that are harassing him do not know he is on their side because he is silent.
In using this qualifier Orwell strays from the true meaning of ‘perhaps’ and implies that he hates something so bitterly that he cannot put it into words and describe them.
Orwell uses the inclusion of specific detail to convey the pain and torment experienced by those locked up by Imperial forced. He mentions their scars, the stench of their cells, and the expressions on their scared faces to convey the utter despair in which they exist.
the tone and voice displayed in the sentence served a function to highlight the horrors of imperialism and the misery that the victims live in
Such grim words, showing a tone of disgust
“wretched prisoners,” “stinking cages,” “grey, cowed faces.. intolerable sense of guilt” He uses vivd words to describe the conditions of their dirty prisons and the guilt he feels.
This is an example of selection of detail because Orwell uses many adjectives describing the surrounding and setting of what’s going on.
In the start of this sentence Orwell uses wretched before prisoners. The adjective wretched gives a sad and dark tone and we don’t usually associate prisoners as happy which qualifies the adjective.
Orwell shouldn’t be feeling oppressed when the British empire is oppressing the Burmese people.
This is a use of dramatic irony where the author, an older Orwell, says he knows something that he now takes for truth that his younger self could not have known.
This sentence and the ones shortly before it include a juxtaposition between the narrators dislike for the British Empire and his dislike for the other empires that may supplant its rule.
Orwell has come to the conclusion that Empire is one of the great evils of the world and believes that that the Burmese people live in oppression beneath their British Overlords. Despite his want for their freedom, he cares not for the Burmese people because of how difficult they make his job as a colonial officer.
This is full of negative diction to show how much he is angered by what he has to do.
This is ironic because he still worked for the empire as a police officer, yet he calls it “evil-spirited.”
he describes these people as evil-spirited little beasts rather that just saying people
“Evil-spirited little beasts”…He’s “qualifying” his intense hatred towards the Burmese people who taunt him.
This is an example of irony because he is talking about how the British Raj is oppressive while also participating in the oppression of the local people
Contrast of how much he hates imperialism, while also hating the Burmese people.
Here’s an interesting use of Latin, at a time when complex emotions and wording are in decline. The word translation means “unto the ages of ages”, which shows how deep a threat the British Raj tyranny presents.
This is an example of juxtaposition because even though Orwell says he hates imperialism, meaning that he should be on the side of the Burmese people, he still hates the people of Burma because they strive to agitate and ridicule him. He hates one on principle and the other because of negative experiences.
This sentence is an example of situational irony in which what Orwell is doing is contrasted by what Orwell believes.
Parallel Structure is found within this sentence. “With one part I thought…..with another part I thought….” The meaning is changed using the parallel structure as Orwell is torn between these two ways of thought, and this is exemplified through this similar sentence structure.
The two ideas mentioned in this paragraph contrast one another greatly.
shows how conflicted he is, he doesn’t enjoy being there but understand it.
This is ironic because he is comparing two vastly different things out of anger.
He says these negative things with conviction because he seems to have really hated being an “Anglo-Indian official.”
There is a benevolent tone in this paragraph when the officer is referring to the Burmese people. He despises imperialism and feels guilty for enforcing it.
One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It 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 act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must.” It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.
The tone of this paragraph is extremely informational and descriptive.
This is a juxtaposition because it emphasizes 2 views on imperialism
This situation is ironic because it is an incident and the elephant did a lot of damage and surely cost people money, but it helped Orwell to gain a more insightful perspective for imperialism. Although the elephant’s escape was dangerous and harmful, it actually helped Orwell a lot.
In this sentence, Orwell makes it known that he didn’t know what to do and didn’t even have the resources available to take care of the situation. In imperialism, the people look to military enforcement to better a situation, I believe that Orwell included this sentence to show that even though they hold power they still aren’t prepared to deal with every situation.
This sentence is an example of selection of detail, it shows the gun which Orwell uses and helps to highlight the reality of the day to day life that orwell experience
Naming the gun, showing how obsolete it is when it comes to an elephant.
He specifically describes how the old 44 Winchester rifle is too small to kill an elephant. This detail is an important detail to the story.
Orwell says he got the call about the elephant and then grabbed a rifle “much too small to kill and elephant” and set off towards the bazaar. Why would he do that?
He seems to not like his job much, which would suggest he doesn’t care much for the quality of his work. Is he just going to shoot the elephant without meaning to kill it? That seems wrong to me.
“old 44 Winchester” could have just said my gun but he added more detail about what type of gun.
This information does not add to or forward the story in any way. I find it confusing why the author included it here.
I find it interesting that even though the Burmese people have been terrorising this officer, but when they need his help, they act as though he is their friend. This constitutes irony in my eyes.
Orwell uses parallel structure by incorporating the word “must” using repetition.
He specifically adds on how they have no weapons to describe the Burmese people. This gives a better understanding of these people.
He displays his hatred towards Europeans at the start of the excerpt however, he still uses British/European oriented vernacular such as the word “rubbish.”
Orwell is telling us a lot about this elephants’ harmful endeavors. This may be to justify Orwell shooting the elephant in the future.
He goes into great detail in this sentence about the incident and specifically talks about “bamboo hut,” “cow,” and “fruit-stalls” that are important factors to the story.
The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast’s foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.
The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.
I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.
But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To 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 impossible. The crowd 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.
But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.
It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.
There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.
I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.
In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.
Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
General Document Comments 0
He states “I was hated by large numbers of people the only time in my life that…” Orwell recognizes that he’s well known but applied irony by stating that he was well known because people disliked him. Orwell also uses a sarcastic tone in this phrase.
Orwell explicitly states the type of gun he uses by quoting “44 Winchester”. He also asserts a tone of confidence by stating that the gun won’t kill the elephant but at least scare it.
He quotes “chucked up my job”, by using the word chucked, Orwell implies that he didn’t value his job and he found it to be casual. Since the word chucked is usually used in statements similar to “I chucked the garbage into the bin.”
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