Critical Criticism In George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant
750 Words3 Pages
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell Have you ever looked at something or someone and started reminiscing negative comments in your head about them? What about cared what others thought of you and tried to play hero to get them to like you? George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, is a great example of this scenario. This essay secretly hid three key points that most written documents may or may not pinpoint on. It explains how you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, animals should be treated just as equal as humans, and always be yourself. It’s easy to pick on someone by their action or appearance, but what about when you’re the victim? In the essay the two victims here are both Orwell and the elephant. Orwell starts off my saying, “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people…” Having to be hated because he had the role of a police officer and couldn’t do anything about the anti-European entropy that’s going around is a major example of judging. The other victim, the farmer’s elephant, was also being judged. Not only by the people, but by Orwell as well. They talked about how dangerous and wild the elephant was. Orwell calls it at one point, “a huge and costly piece of machinery.” While speaking on that statement, answer me this: Is that all we see in animals? A costly piece of machinery? I know, not all of us think like that and that’s great. For the ones that do, you may not care but there are