Critical Analysis Of Shooting An Elephant

" Shooting an Elephant " written by George Orwell describes an ugly nature of imperialism. The story is about one European police officer who served in Moulmein, in lower Burma. While he was doing his job he faced many difficulties because of local people's anti- European attitude. This negative attitude overcomplicated his job. He had already realized that he wanted to get rid of his job as soon as possible. As for the job he was doing, he got acquainted with the dirty work of Empire and he was for all the Burmese, but like every Englishman in the East he had to think about himself in order to survive. One day, an incident changed his overall point of view. He was reported that one elephant had lost its control and was ravaging the bazaar. He did not know what he

The crowd expected him to kill the elephant and he felt that he was obliged to act in this way. Eventually, under this pressure he acted against his own wish and he killed it. After the elephant’s death opinions about the incident were divided among the people. Some of them said it was right thing to do, while others said that it was a shame to kill the elephant. In the end he was happy that an Indian coolie was killed by the elephant, because it gave him a good reason to shoot it. Actually he killed the elephant not because of the coolie, he killed it because he was afraid of looking like a fool in front of the natives. You may ask a question where the motive for this action comes from. Actually, this is how the oppressor becomes oppressed in imperialism. The situation which is described in the story shows us that motives for our actions do not depend on us all the time. The motives can be different depending on many factors such as others’ expectations, thinking about others’ benefits instead of yours and facing the situation in which you can be influenced by others