Shooting an Elephant

I found the story of “Shooting an Elephant” by Orwell to be quite interesting. What interested me was how the character in the story opposed the British ideas and did not like what he was doing, and how he felt bad about the people in Burma and how they were being treated. But he still kept his job since he was getting paid and he had to enforce the idea of imperialism.

Once we talked about the story in class today it really made a lot of sense to me, since it was about an issue that was happening during that time. Maintaining image was one of the important aspects of the story, because the officer did not want to shoot the elephant but he had to in order to not look like a fool to the Burmese and to maintain imperialism.  

I would have never thought of the elephant as a metaphor for Imperialism but what happened to the elephant really seemed to relate to imperialism. I think that an elephant was a good way to express imperialism, because the story described the elephant as a big strong creature that was tough to take down and would not die that easily or quickly.  

I also had no clue that the Burmese people or any other people during that time under European control would be the actual people who hold all of the power. I could not imagine feeling so powerless when officers are supposedly the people who do have the power. It really seemed like it was a lonely job to have, since there were a lot more of the Burmese than European officers and the European officers had to do what the Burmese wanted unless they did not want to have anyone on their side.     

At one point Orwell says that doing what people want or expect of him is like wearing a mask and his face grows to fit it. In a way I found this statement a bit odd, because I would think that it would be the other way around but in this case it makes a lot of sense. Because, Orwell had to change himself in order suit what the Burmese people wanted him to do.

Discussion Questions:   

Do you think that the Burmese would have ever noticed how awful the enforcer’s felt about the whole situation?

Even though Imperialism gave certain advantages to the places that were taken over, protection and resources, does that overpower the bad things about imperialism?