Analysis Of George Orwell's 'Shooting An Elephant'

In Between Desires and Expectations

In the narrative, “Shooting an Elephant”, George Orwell writes about his memory of shooting an elephant, when he was a police officer in Moulmein, Lower Burma and shows the nature of imperialism. Firstly, he was not going to kill the elephant, because this “monster” elephant, who was destroying the city, was completely peaceful and calm, when he found it. However, the locals were expecting him to kill the elephant and put him under the pressure. He had inner conflict between his will to win the sympathy of Burmese and his sorrow of hiding his true intentions. He shoots the elephant at the end of his inner conflict in order not to look like a fool to the locals, to show his feelings as an Anglo-Indian in Burma and as a European to be the hero of the locals. The essay perfectly describes how the imperialism destroy both the defeater and the defeated 's humanity. "I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind." The narrator illustrates how he lost his own control and gave it as a victim to the people who are staring at him with their “yellow faces” and excited looks. Speaking about George Orwell as a person who is in between the two choices; his own desires and the expectation, every human 's life is full of this kind of dilemmas. There are lots of tough situations in our life that put us in a difficulty of making a true choice, so that in the end we finally decide to be on our own side or the side