Preview

Shooting An Elephant Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
743 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Shooting An Elephant Analysis
The essay is about an officer who must make a decision whether to shoot an elephant or not. From the very beginning the officer is saying that he is hated by a large number of people. He starts off as an honest man in my opinion. Will he continue being an honest man throughout the story? The officer was a subdivisional police officer of a town and the officer describes himself as an easy target. This officer even admits that he does not like his job. Like the officer, I too had a choice to make, whether to shoot an elephant or not. I shot the elephant just as the officer did too. The officer talks being stuck, being stuck between the hatred of the empire he served and the range against the evil spirited little beasts who tried making his job impossible. Then came the officers problem. The officer receives a call pertaining to an elephant that was on the loose. The elephant had broken out of the chains that were holding prison. The elephant had made his way to the Burmese town. The Burmese population had no weaponry to protect themselves from the elephant. While the elephant was in town, he had killed a man and destroyed some materialistic things along the town. By the …show more content…
The people around the officer had not shown much interest on the elephant until they knew the elephant was going to be shot. The people around just wanted the meat. The officer however, did not want to shoot the elephant, he had a rifle only to protect himself. But, peer pressure was getting to him. Crowds of people were following him waiting for him to kill the elephant. The officer then finds the elephant and knows deep inside that he does not want to shoot the elephant. The officer just wanted to watch him till the mahout came back and caught the elephant. No one liked the officer but since he had the rifle ready to kill, the people thought he was worth

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In stories, "Fourth of July" and "Shooting an Elephant", the main characters' experience a conflict within themselves. Without these conflicts, it would be hard for the authors' to support their narrative point.…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On the other hand, the story "Shooting an Elephant” was wrote by George Orwell base on his personal experience in Moulmein, in Lower Burma .He served his country, "British Empire as a colonial administrator. The author described the effects on the oppressed Burmese Indians and theirs oppressor British Empire. The internal conflict of British men, his feelings and convictions linked to his pride from of the angry crowd. Shooting an Elephant is more than a personal experience story, is a reflection of the dilemmas of morals standards in real life and the costs that it represent as a human been and his nature as well .…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In "Shooting an Elephant" The main characters biggest conflict was to shoot an elephant. This was something he did not and typically under the circumstances would not have done, but felt compelled and pressured to do so. If it weren't for the watching Indians this story may have turned out differently. He felt as if he had to do it, cause by not doing it would have been like him demonstrating his and his native country weakness. Being in a county that his native land had a lot of imperial influence, he could not let this happen.…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Orwell succeeds greatly in telling one of his remarkable experiences in Burma. While working for the British Empire as a police officer in Burma, he comes across a elephant gone mad that in his judgment he shouldn’t shoot because the handler was on his way and there was no need to kill the expensive piece of property anymore. But in the end he felt that he needed to do a service for the mob of people that had congregated. Orwell wrote this essay 10 or so years after the events that took place in the essay. The British Empire at the time of writing was going through major changes and its imperial power was declining. So he was telling his incredible story as a way of informing the British citizens at the time of exposing the injustices and dark side of imperialism that he felt he had to right. The whole world when he was writing this essay was enduring a economic depression and were facing another possible world war. So it was a dark time not only for the British empire but the whole world.…

    • 796 Words
    • 23 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant, published in 2014 in the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Wells Tower argues why anyone would want to shoot an elephant. Tower begins building his credibility with personal facts sources. He also cites convincing facts and statistics successfully appealing emotional appeals. Although trophy hunting is bad, many people still do it. I believe trophy hunting is bad and I think it should it stop. If there is less of trophy hunting, we will be able to save more animals like elephants.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yup This is IT

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Orwell responds to the call, taking his rifle, “an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant” (2845 Orwell) in hopes of frightening it with the noise. This elephant was not wild, but normally tame and broke loose due to sexual desire. This first action is just an exercise of authority in maintaining order; however, in seeing a dead native victim he requests an elephant rifle and five cartridges. This is when the Burmese become quite excited and an “immense crowd of two thousand” (2846 Orwell) follow him. They believe that the imperial police officer is going to shoot the elephant when, in actuality, he just wanted to defend himself from becoming another devilish corpse.…

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    (para. 3) On the way to find the beast the officer sees a man lying in the mud, brutally mauled and dead. After seeing this "devilish" looking man he starts to ponder that he may actually have to kill this elephant if he is in danger. Rifle in hand and a crowd behind he continues his journey. (para. 4) The officer realizes the crowd is excited at the thought he is going to kill this elephant. Killing the elephant would provide entertainment and food for them. At the bottom of the hill the officer and crowd behind see the elephant across the road "peacefully eating." The officer knows the elephant has passed it's stage of "must" and not to shoot it. He decides to observe the elephant to see if the state of "must" has truly passed instead of shooting it. (para. 5 & 6) The officer has made up his mind until he "glances" at the immense crowd cheering him on and feels uneasy about his decision. The crowd would be angry and hate the British officer more if he did not shoot. The officer is faced with the decision of either shooting the elephant and pleasing the Burmese while appearing strong and dominating as a British officer or doing the right thing by not shooting the defenceless elephant. (para. 7 & 8) A thought tips the officer over the…

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant,’ is an essay which takes place in imperial Burma where he is a police officer working on behalf of the British Empire. He is resented by the people who pressures him into shooting an elephant, where he describes himself as being a meaningless puppet in front of the Burmese crowd. Throughout this essay he also delivers his strong personal beliefs towards his hatred of imperialism, despite working for the colonies, he mentions several times of how much he despises it and sees it as ‘evil.’…

    • 865 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Shooting An Elephant Greed

    • 1608 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The degrading of the Burmese shows the lack of humanity of the British Empire, no human would ever degrade another human in such a manner. In losing their humanity, the British become mere “absurd puppet[s] pushed to and fro by the will of [others]”; they only have the shape of a human, but they do not have anything inside of them, a heart, morals or otherwise. The downfall of the Empire is expressed in the death of the elephant. The elephant is a metaphor for the empire, as shown by how “the Burmese were quite helpless against it” and by the destruction the elephant causes in the village which is a parallel to the destruction that the empire as a whole wrecked on the country of Burma. By shooting…

    • 1608 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Cowboy and His Elephant: The Story Of a Remarkable Friendship was written bye Malcolm MacPherson, and was published in 2001. The story begins by describing what a cull is and that the lone survivor of the cull is called "The Storyteller". The first chapter is not accurate as nothing is known of what happened to the elephant until the point of the cull. It simply describes basic behaviors of other elephants in the same region. Later in the first chapter the cull begins, which is the slaughter of an entire group of elephants, however, one man had made a promise to save one elephant from a cull. Save he did, he saved the newborn elephant. Later that week that baby and five others were to be shipped to the United States, Buck Devries, the…

    • 954 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shooting an Elephant

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages

    the double standard and as race played part in the bureaucratic town of Burma. The author unfolds the story that should he not kill the elephant, that had gone mad and killed a coolie, he must forfeit his authority with the local Burmese. As Orwell stated "only time in his life" he was hated, by large number of people because of his position" ...(P. 173)…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The protagonist and narrator of "Shooting an Elephant" made a decision that many would consider unjust. He shot and killed and elephant. Looking from the outside in, it would look as if he was a terrible person from what he did, for a vast amount of people consider the act wrong morally. Although, one must take in his intentions of the act too. He never wanted, nor planned, to kill the elephant. The Burmese people rooting him on seemed irrefutable, and he felt as if he was doing what they wanted him to. That contradicts the idea that the narrator of this story was a monstrous person because he shot an elephant.…

    • 670 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shooting an Elephant

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A price is payed to save oneself from humiliation, but, being pressured into doing something that one doesn't want to do, makes people feel lost and pushed into a big problem. In the story "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell, he himself goes through a struggle in being the one to shoot an Elephant. In the beginning he knew what he had to avoid of being laughed at from the Burmese people that surrounded him, since he is an imperial policeman. Throughout the story, Orwell uses rhetorical tools such as: metaphors, connotation, and irony to give his readers a better perspective in what's going on in the story. Seeing different forms of writing can help readers see the relationship between these tools and what Orwell is saying about imperialism.…

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    * I think Orwell used the fact to support his analytic points by describing the death of the elephant in step by step, so the reader can imagine along. For example in paragraph 13, he explained how he tried to make the elephant suffer the least but ended up being hopeless. He also tried to explain how the elephant was in such an agony to the point that it probably couldn’t feel anything anymore.…

    • 806 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    POACHING

    • 277 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The story was write by David hands. He was video taping some elephants, with some men armed from social antipoaching unit.Everything was fine until one of the men shoot at the elephants.the elephants started to run towards them the men kept shooting.Some elephants where killed others were injured .lots of the men there were hurt.…

    • 277 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays