Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell Analysis

The Elephant 's Demise Orwell’s essay was an emotional drain, as the passages entailed very descriptive and gory images conveyed through deep explanation and detail. The essay emphasizes the situation from a first person perspective by immersing the reader into a situation of executing an elephant which had gone ‘must’ with an overzealous crowd expecting an exhibit of slaughter. The goal in describing the savagery was to enhance the understanding of his conflicts including the physical, emotional, psychological, and the societal expectations of the Burmese.

The narrative description of the brutality endured by the elephant stayed hours after reading Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”. The barbaric torture portrayed in the statement: “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.” (Orwell, par. 12). He likely replayed the scenario in his head multiple times, with different outcomes. Telling his story, he hoped to relieve his conscious of the regret of succumbing to the weight upon him … the weight of the elephant he killed and dealing with the anguish of the irreversible actions.

Both the Burmese people and the elephant were oppressed and treated inhumanely. Granted,

They were victims, restrained of their natural essence and way of life. The resemblances posed are within Orwell’s writing, “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 …”, (Orwell par. 2). The elephant could be sympathized in likeness with the Burmese people. " It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of "must" is due …”, (Orwell, par.