In “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell writes about his grueling experience as a police officer in the East, and his attempt to kill an elephant that horribly wrong. In the East, the inequalities of life are more prevalent, and Orwell observes these in his essay. In “The Death of the Moth” Virginia Woolf writes about her own experience of death, when she witnessed a moth perish in front of her. Woolf compares all of these equalities between a moth and other living things. Though Orwell writes about the inequalities of life, his own opinion is more akin to Woolf’s view that all life is equal. This is shown through their similar opinions on death.
In Shooting an Elephant, Orwell is forced to shoot an elephant because it went on a rampage and killed an unskilled worker. According to most laws, something that kills something else is usually killed itself. This law of an eye for an eye has been used by humans since around the year 4 A.D. with Hammurabi’s
…show more content…
This is explaining how there is an equality among life, across all species. That every animal has the same energy when living. All animals are therefore equal to her. When the moth is finally deceased, the last sentence she writes is “[o] yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am” (38). Whatever the size of the creature, death will always be stronger than that energy of life.
So, Woolf writes about the equality of all life. Orwell writes about the inequality. To Woolf, life’s energy is shared among all creatures and so all living things are valuable. Orwell writes about how in his world a life is only worth its labor. Both write about how any creature that is dying, will struggle until it’s last breath to live. No matter the view on life, their view on death is the same. All living things will struggle futilely against
Death is inevitable; the end of existence is a fixed event that will ensue all life. Nevertheless, life perseveres against the odds of the world. The struggle for survival is examined in Virginia Woolf’s The Death of the Moth and Annie Dillard’s Polyphemus Moth, both in which a moth - seemingly insignificant lifeforms - engages in a match with death. Although both moths face adversity and fight to live, the certainty of death is confirmed when the Woolf’s moth’s natural passing comes.
Meanwhile, Orwell represents the crushing of individual
In Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. gives an inside look at the racism and oppression that African American’s had to face during the early 1960’s. Not only did King portray the oppression he dealt with through his writing, but, George Orwell did as well in his story Shooting an Elephant. As shown in both readings, Martin Luther King and George Orwell had both been oppressed, but in two very different ways. King discusses the oppression that had spread throughout the USA created by racist, white America, while Orwell dealt with oppression by the Burmese because he had been apart of Britain’s imperial law enforcement. The difference between King and Orwell is that King had been oppressed because something he could not change,
In Animal Farm by George Orwell life for all animals but pigs becomes brutal; the pigs kill dissenting animals, stand on two legs, drink alcohol, and move into Mr. Jones’s house, and in the Russian Revolution, people were unequal unless they were in Stalin’s favor. Napoleon and Stalin were similar because they both forced their ideas onto other people. Both Napoleon and Stalin starved their lower companions and used this to force them to do what they want them to do. Stalin forced industrialization on the people and Napoleon forced industrialization on the animals by having them constantly rebuilding the windmill.
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.
Both Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Truman Show directed by Peter Weir, have very similar views on topics like power and the corruption of authority, the ideal life and society and even the significance of self in our vast world. Animal Farm follows the rise and fall of Soviet Russia as depicted through animals, the novel is one of the greatest uses of figurative writing and accurately portrays humanity's flaws in a system as well as individually. Truman Show is about a man who discovers his entire life is a TV show and that all he has known in his perfect world is fabricated. Both articles share similar views on what our world is and what it should be in terms of a perfect life, society, or government. “The Good Life” by definition is the ideal life, a life everyone wants, wishes, works and aspires to have.
Death; one of the strongest words in the english language next to love. Death is always seen as a terrible thing, that bring darkness and sorrow to those around it; however, the way the author Annie Dillard has used in the amazing essay of “Death Of A Moth” gives Death a whole different meaning. As Dillard writes about the death of this moth her use of description, her changing tone, and her purpose for this essay brings life to the essay and changes the meaning of death forever.
In two passages, Virginia Woolf compares meals she was served at a men’s and at a women’s college. The contrasting meals reveal Woolf’s frustration at the inferior treatment that women face. The first meal at the men’s college is elegant, enjoyable, and satisfying while the second is plain, cheap, and bland. This clearly juxtaposes the expense and luxury afforded to the men with the “penny-pinching” nature of the women’s in order to show Woolf’s underlying attitude of dissatisfaction against the inequality that women are not granted the same privileges and investment as men.
In Vonnegut’s story, everyone is completely equal. Nobody can be better than someone else, which is bad because that means that nobody can be unique. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s story, blacks and whites are not treated equal, but he wishes that they would be. He wants it to be a world where you look at a black and a white and see no difference. Both works show people trying to make an equal society.
Female writers, Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf, both had very different life experiences. Not only did they live on different continents but they were born in different centuries. Even so both of these authors had a similar and peculiar occurrence happen in both of their lives. The occurrence included an encounter with a dying moth leading them into deep reflective thought. Dillard and Woolf both wrote pieces on their thoughts and how the encounter influenced them in pieces titled “The Death of a Moth” and “The Death of the Moth” respectively.
A Critical Analysis of the Rhetorical Strategies Used in Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”. In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”, the author begins with a definite statement about his views toward British Imperialism. Orwell uses pathos to appeal to the readers emotions about his situation and also uses logos when trying to decide on shooting the elephant. His powerful technique of illustrating the message, “Imperialism was an evil thing” and that it affects both the oppressor and the oppressed is effective with the use of description, classical appeals, extended metaphors, and rhetorical devices.
Virginia Woolf- A Room of One’s Own Response Equality between the sexes is a relatively new concept. Throughout most of history women have always been treated to less privilege and opportunity as their male counterparts. Beginning in the 19th century onward, women began to make the argument for themselves that they were deserving of more fair and balanced treatment in society.
In George Orwell 's short story titled “Shooting an Elephant” presented an event that changed a countries civilization. George’s life in Burma, and the prejudice placed by the people he oppressed inspired his writing through the uses of setting, style, and theme. In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” Orwell no specific event influenced this piece rather it was an accumulation of many small events of prejudice and hate by an opposing group of
One simile in particular is used when he is describing a group of men watching over a prisoner that they are preparing to send to get hanged. Orwell thinks to himself, “It was like men handling a fish which is still alive