50 essays shooting an elephant

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Shooting an Elephant

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of  the Orwell Estate . The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity – please consider making a donation or becoming a Friend of the Foundation to help us maintain these resources for readers everywhere. 

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. 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 – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must.” It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.

The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast’s foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.

The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.

I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. 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. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.

Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

Published by New Writing , 2, Autumn 1936

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Orwell Estate .

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Orwell’s Shooting an elephant: Summary, Analysis & Essay Questions

‘shooting an elephant by george orwell : summary & analysis’.

Shooting an Elephant presents an account of George Orwell’s, (original name Eric Arthur Blair) life in Burma where he was posted as a subdivisional police officer of the British Imperial Police Force. The environment of Burma had an impact on Orwell and his works. It remained an important influence throughout his literary career. His experiences in Burma shaped his career in a way and its effect could be clearly felt in his works including his best one ‘1984’. ‘Burmese Days’ presents a detailed account of his life in Burma but his other works too including ‘A Hanging’ & ‘Shooting an Elephant’ highlight the beautiful and ugly aspects of life as the author got to live and experience in the South Asian Country.  

Despite a strong anti European feeling among the natives making him feel guilty and bitter, the author could not help feeling for the helpless local people who did not have better means to express their anguish and disgust over imperial forces. Orwell felt a strong remorse and therefore resigned when he was in England on a leave. However, he continued to publish several literary pieces that showed his strong disgust against the imperial evil in Asia. ‘Shooting an Elephant’ presents an interesting account of life in Burma and vividly portrays how the less developed orientals felt about their oppressors.   However, his works also show Orwell’s sensitivity to the inhumanity perpetrated by the imperialist forces and the everlasting impact it was going to have on the Eastern people’s conscience.

The incident portrayed in the essay took place in Moulmein, now known as Mawlamyine. Orwell starts with a depiction of local hatred against Europeans and his bitter experiences. While their European oppressors were successful at suppressing revolts of all form, locals demonstrated their hatred whenever they had a chance. Often feeling that strong and bitter hatred   in the form of an angry laughter could be a bone chilling experience for Orwell. What made the hatred against him even sharper was his position of a police officer. It was quite likely that several of them hated him enough to kill him if they could dare to. Nobody dared raise a riot for the fear of strong action from the imperial police force but still if ever a European woman ventured in the market alone, one would spit betel juice on her clothes.

Orwell describes how he was tripped up by a Burman on the football field and the Burman referee ignored it while the crowd gave a hideous laugh. The Burmese monks were an even bigger problem, irritating him the most. They had no task but to jeer at the Europeans and these Buddhist monks were everywhere in Burma. Burma is called the land of Golden Pagodas and there are still around 2200 Pagodas there. There has always lived a large population of Buddhist monk on the Burmese land. Like the other natives, the burmese monks too were against the imperial rule and Orwell was bothered by the way they reacted to his presence. It made him loathe his job of   a police officer. He was a regular target of offensive attitude which was the local men’s way to vent their frustration. However, the tone of Orwell’s essay is sympathetic and seems to be providing a clarification for the sin his imperialist fellow servicemen committed.

Orwell draws a stark picture of the cruelties meted out to the local people by their oppressors. In the second paragraph, he describes the job of an imperial policemen and how cruel a job it was . The prisons especially presented rich evidence regarding the wrongdoings of the British. Watching inmates inside locked and stinky cages sitting with cowed faces and scarred hearts filled the author with an intolerable sense of guilt. However, Orwell was caught in a   bitter dilemma and while he was feeling unlucky at being a part of the British tyranny, on the other he could not help feeling bad about how locals retaliated with disgust. It felt like being spat at and so in frustration, he thought of driving a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. The stubbornness with which these Buddhist monks could tease him made him feel helpless. However, he calls these feelings a by-product of British imperialism. Orwell felt undereducated and under experienced which made him all the more perplexed.

While he was growing bitter of imperialism, something happened that let him understand better why these despotic governments acted the way they did.   It was an ordinary morning till he received a call from another sub inspector downtown that a wild elephant was out of control and he must do something because it was ravaging the town. What followed was both tragic and comic; childish and serious. Orwell was worried he could hardly do anything but then he decided that he must check. He picked his old .44 Winchester which was a small weapon to kill an elephant with. Orwell thought that it could be used to terrorise the beast. The elephant had gone ‘must’ ( must means out of control). He had broken his chains and escaped into the town and the mahout who could control it had given the wrong way to chase the beast and could not be back for twelve hours. The Burmese people felt helpless against the elephant attack. The beast had already wreaked havoc. It had killed a cow, destroyed fruit stalls and stock and even vented its anger on the municipal van.

The sub inspector who had called Orwell was waiting for him with two constables. It was one of the poorest corners of the town filled only with thatched huts. Orwell could not get any definite information from the locals. Everyone was in a state of confusion. Orwell himself felt lost. He notes that in the East, the more accurate a description seems, the more inaccurate it looks when you approach the real scene. People were pointing in different directions and Orwell had started thinking it was a prank. Suddenly, he heard some noise on one side where a woman was shooing away some kids. Orwell started in that direction and saw a Dravidian Coolie’s body lying there almost naked. The man had come under the feet of the elephant. The beast had appeared there suddenly and picked the man by his trunk before grinding him with his feet.   The corpse looked devilish with its eyes wide open and skin off its back. Orwell sent back the pony and asked for a rifle from a friend’s house nearby. An orderly brought the rifle with five cartridges and some Burmans informed the author that the beast was in a paddy field nearby.

The locals were excited at seeing the rifle and started following the author. They were interested in seeing the elephant being shot dead. Orwell did not intend to kill the animal but had got the rifle just to protect himself in case the beast went wild; he had already started feeling foolish. The fat beast was stuffing himself   when Orwell approached. The crowd behind Orwell was growing bigger. Most of them were following him like they follow a procession. It was a tame elephant and as soon as Orwell saw it, he knew he could not shoot it because that would be like wasting a piece of costly machinery. Elephants did most of the heavy work in that period and losing an elephant meant losing 50 or 100 workers. Orwell thought that the attack of ‘Must’ had passed and the elephant would mean no harm anymore. He thought it could be peacefully brought under control by the mahout. 

However, the crowd around him had grown. At least two thousand stood behind Orwell. The size of the crowd made Orwell sweat. He thought he would have to kill the elephant because these people were interested in seeing the elephant getting killed. Their yellow faces were eager too see the animal dead and Orwell was under increasing pressure to let them have a nice show. He was feeling like a puppet before the crowd of 2000 behind him. It made him realise, he will have to act as per the convention. Orwell notes, “I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”.  As an oppressor, he does not just lose his image but also trust, goodwill and most of all the love of the masses it tried to rule. It was not as if the oppressor was ruling them; he was also being ruled by their will and had to keep acting like their God to remain in control and that meant being controlled by the locals and to stand up to the standards of being a “Burra sahib” (senior officer). It was impossible to stand and watch because that would make him look a bigger fool before the crowd. He was afraid of being laughed at and not being laughed at was every European’s struggle in the East.   Think of Europeans as Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli with monkeys jeering at him from tree tops.

The bulky animal was eating calmly and Orwell’s mind was considering several things at once. He could not shoot the animal because it did not feel right and besides that it was worth at least a hundred pounds. The owner of the elephant stood to lose   a lot.   The author turned to some experienced looking Burmans to ask how the elephant was behaving. They replied it was calm but getting near it was dangerous. Orwell’s mind was working faster under pressure. He quickly planned his course of action. He would go near the elephant and shoot if it charged. However, the ground was muddy and Orwell was not an excellent shooter. If he missed and his luck was poor, he could die like a duck as the poor Dravidian coolie did. However, more than his own health, he was worried for the sea of yellow faces around him. The fear of being laughed at was still making him miserable.

At last, left with no alternative Orwell got down on the road and aimed at the elephant. He was not an experienced hunter and did not know where to shoot the animal so aimed for its forehead where he thought its brain was. The crowd sighed in relief and as he pulled the trigger it cheered. The elephant did not move but seemed to be trying to beat the overwhelming pain caused by the penetrating bullet. Like he had suddenly grown too old to hold his weight, the beast sat down on its knees. With the second shot he tried to get back on his feet and the third shot brought him down but he seemed to be struggling to remain on his feet till at last he fell. He had trumpeted just once before falling and his breathing continued after he fell. So, Orwell fired the remaining shots where he thought its heart was. The elephant was not dying and so Orwell got his small rifle and poured more bullets into him trying to rid him of the misery he was undergoing in his last moments. He got away from the scene. Later, he was pained to know it took the animal at least half an hour to die. The Burmans were eager to have its meat. They stripped its bones of all the flesh by afternoon.

Heated discussions followed the shooting and the Indian owner was angry but could do nothing. However, Orwell was legally right since the animal had killed a person. The older Europeans thought he had done the right thing whereas the younger ones thought it was not worth it since the coolie was worth nothing before an elephant. Orwell felt good that the coolie had been killed since it made him legally right to have killed the animal. However, he had done it solely to avoid looking a fool before 2000 natives and wondered if any of the Europeans could have guessed that.

The essay ends at a comic note but it is difficult to avoid feeling the hidden sarcasm. Orwell shows that while he has been feeling like a fool, it is easy to see others are bigger fools who neither know their own conscience and nor understand the feelings of the natives. The essay has a comic and sarcastic tone and Orwell uses this interesting incident to explain the situation unfolding in Burma. Just to avoid the situation getting too comic he does something that   makes him feel even comic inside. At the end, he goes on to pour bullets into the elephant just to ensure it is dead. It shows his frustration over the situation that the imperialists had created. Over everything else it shows that the imperialists have achieved everything meaningless there in Burma.   Orwell’s work is though provoking but equally soul shaking. He proves the poisonous fruits of imperialism have choked and suffocated everyone including the perpetrators.

Essay questions: –

– What is the main point or theme of the essay?

Shooting an Elephant is mainly about the tussle going on in Orwell’s conscience while working as a police officer for the British in Burma. However, apart from imperialism and its effects on local life, the essay is also about how the inherent evil of imperialism is destroying the freedom of both the oppressor and the oppressed. The essay deals with the hatred Europeans earned ruling natives of Burma by force. The imperialists were digging their own grave by brutalising locals. This gets obvious in Orwell’s dilemma where he does not want to perpetrate the same evil as his compatriots. Even ironic is how poorly the natives reacted. The situation was so comic; the locals reacted like monkeys and aped the British.

Especially, the Buddhist monks all around Burma had grown good at teasing. Orwell felt deeply frustrated and hoped he would drive his bayonet through one of them some day. The level of frustration grew and made him hate his job because despite all he knows these poor people had no method to express their anguish. So, at last while the acts look pardonable, Orwell thought being a ‘Burra Sahib’ would create self hatred in him. The miserable lives of prisoners inside those stinky and small prison cells and signs of cruelty on their backs and buttocks, made him feel deeply for the natives.

Apart from the evils of imperialism, it is also a very personal essay in which Orwell expresses how he personally saw things. He cannot support the evil of imperialism. He is afraid of being   laughed at because he is not a monkey like many of the other officers loyal to British Raaj. It is why he cannot afford being hated either. Some of the hatred appears undeserved to him he was very angry at the local Buddhist monks. These monks were the most sharp and sudden in their repulsive attacks on the British. The fear of being made a laughing stock made him act the way he did the day he shot the elephant. The British have failed to tame the locals which could have been possible, had they tried love instead of tyranny and tried to form trustful and strong relationships with them. ‘Shooting An Elephant’ is one of those important essays that deal with the life Orwell experienced in Burma. Another is ‘A Hanging’. In these essays, he reveals the side of his personality which felt deeply for humanity. In his other essays too like How the Poor Die or those on Beggars in the British streets, he shows his sympathy for the poor clearly. As an officer, he cannot help abiding to the laws and doing his duty but still he shows that the job made him feel soulless

What is the most powerful symbol in the essay?

There are two powerful symbols used in the essay to deliver its central message and they are the elephant and the rifle. The target and the weapon are two important symbols. The elephant represents the size of hatred that is growing against their British oppressors among the Burmese people. The rifle represents the weapon of tyranny and the cruel methods used by British to keep the local population under control.   Orwell uses not one but two rifles to kill the elephant and still it keeps breathing and dies a slow death. Orwell has poured several bullets into it and left the scene. He is afraid of the local people on his back and it shows that despite their murderous weapons and methods, English   have failed to control the natives as they expected. So many bullets prove insufficient to kill the large animal which gives one trumpet and dies a painful and slow death. Orwell felt his heart wrenching. It shows that imperialists stand to gain nothing but hatred that will last longer than the empire. They can inflict as much cruelty as they like but they will not gain anything from it. It will only deplete them of their power and influence like Orwell feels his depleting to see a crowd of 2000 yellow faces on his back.

– Why do you think Orwell’s voice as narrative is the only one readers hear? Is the absence of a dialogue a strength or weakness in “Shooting an Elephant”?

The reason the readers can hear only Orwell’s voice is that apart from being an attack on imperialism, it is a very personal essay. Orwell recounts his role in the tragic imperial drama. Rather than Burma or imperialism, it is about his personal feelings on both and how he felt caught between the oppressor and the oppressed. Readers do not hear any other voice or come across any dialogues which helps maintain focus on the central theme. It is to keep readers focused on the central topic which is the moral dilemma and guilt Orwell personally faced serving the British empire. It is more like the voice of his conscience. Orwell uses his voice to retain the comic flavour injected into the essay to make it highly engaging. He shows the entire episode from his angle because using too many angles might have lessened the strength of his argument and Orwell has tried to steer clear of any form of confusions that might arise from it. This style helps him deliver the point with intended effect.

– According to Orwell, how did the Burmese subjects and their British rulers interact? 

The Burmese people and their oppressors were not in a cordial relationship which is evident from the account Orwell presents. It was frequently expressed in their interactions and as Orwell notes if a white lady could dare venture alone into the market, some native would spit betel juice on her. He himself got to be the victim of this   hatred at several times. Once on a   foot ball field, he was tripped up by a Burmese player as a show of his dislike for European people and an entire crowd laughed at him.   The British officials were bound by rules they had to follow and as such they could not extend a friendly hand towards the locals since they were expected to play the sahib. The account of the prison cells that Orwell portrays in his essay shows that the officials were quite brutal in their treatment of the locals. The English wanted to be respected and while visibly the locals respected them, if given a chance they would have eaten an officer like they ate up the elephant.   At times, these interactions might take a favourable turn and be less bitter like when the elephant is on rampage. The locals followed him like a procession. Still, they never got to become friendly. Even Orwell started feeling a dislike for the British Raj which had turned Burma into a hell. Every native face wore a strong abhorrence for its oppressor.

– Discuss the nature of British imperial violence in Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant.” How is the empire’s violence portrayed and what significance does it have?

Orwell presents a short and direct account of the violence perpetrated by the British imperialists during the entire essay. It is presented in the form of an account of people caged aside small and stinky prison cells. The scars on the buttocks of these prisoners tell how they were brutally bogged. If it was not for the violence they perpetrated, the hatred inside the natives would have been less strong. Orwell presents this scene from the prison to demonstrate the burden on his conscience and how much he disliked being an officer and policing the natives. His burden is much different from that of his compatriots who gladly follow everything that is law. The younger officials agree that a coolie is worth less than an elephant. It also shows how less they value the native lives. The central theme of the essay is Orwell’s moral dilemma. To help readers understand, he writes about how the violence had scarred Burmese history and is directing him towards more self hatred.

– What does this incident tell us about imperialism’s impact on its subjects? What does it say about imperialism’s impact on its rulers?   

In light of Orwell’s essay, it’s a no brainer that imperialism equals insanity. From the prison cells to the bazaars outside in the town, the hatred for imperialist forces is evident. It shows in the behaviour of the people and its negative impact is evident on how the local   people interact with the Europeans. Orwell fells his strong hatred and tries not to be laughed at by the locals. The more cruelties the imperials perpetrate, the more stubborn the locals grow. Their hatred keeps growing intense and even if they do not dare to riot, still they vent their frustration using subtler means which British find frustrating. However, this was about the subjects. The rulers themselves have relinquished much of their liberty trying to rule others. Being a Burra sahib they are expected to follow certain conventions, that make them appear all the more comic and inhuman. It is the situation of a moral dilemma for Orwell who says that “I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”. While trying to destroy others’ freedom, it is his own that the white man has destroyed along with his peace of mind.

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/18/did-george-orwell-shoot-an-elephant-his-1936-confession-and-what-it-might-mean

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• Shooting an Elephant

Read our complete notes on the essay “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell. Our notes cover Shooting an Elephant summary and detailed analysis.

Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell Summary

The narrator of the essay starts with describing the hate he is confronted with in a town in Burma. He says that he is a sub-divisional police officer and is hated by the locals in “aimless, petty kind of way”. He also confesses to being on the wrong side of the history as he explains the inhuman tortures of the British Raj on the local prisoners.

After describing his conditions, he starts telling a story of a fine morning which he considers as “enlightening”. He is told on the phone about an elephant which has shattered his fetters and gone mad, intimidating the localities and causing destructions. The mahout i.e. went in the incorrect way searching for the elephant and now is almost twelve hour’s journey away. The Burmese are unable to stop the elephant as no one in their whole population has a gun or any other weapon and seems to be quite helpless in front of the merciless elephant.

After the phone call, Orwell goes out to search the elephant. While asking in the neighborhood for where they have last sighted the elephant, he suddenly hears yells from a little distance away and immediately follows it.  Going towards the elephant he finds a dead labor around the corner lying in the mud, being a victim of the elephant’s brutality. After seeing the dead labor, he sends orderly to bring him a gun that should be strong enough to kill an elephant.

In the meanwhile, Orwell is informed by the local people about the location of the elephant that was in the paddy field. After seeing the gun in Orwell’s hand, a large number of local people start following him, even those who were previously uninterested in the incident. All of them are only interested and getting excited about the shooting of the elephant. In the field, Orwell sees the elephant calmly gazing and decided not to kill it as it would be wrong to kill such a peaceful creature and to kill it will be like abolishing ‘a huge and costly piece of machinery’.

However, when he gazes back at the mob behind, it has expanded to a thousand and is still expanding, supposing him to fire the elephant. To them, Orwell is like a magician and is tasked with amusing them. By the first thought, he realizes that he is unable to resist the crowd’s wish to kill the elephant and the right price of white westerner’s takeover of the Position is white gentlemen’s independence. He seems to be a kind of “puppet” that is guaranteed to fulfill their subject’s expectancy.

Consequently, Orwell decides to shoot the elephant or in another case, the crowd will laugh at him, which was intolerable to him. At first, he thinks to see the response of the elephant after slightly approaching it, however, it seems dangerous and would make the crowd laugh at him which was utterly humiliating for him. To avoid undesirable awkwardness, he has to kill the elephant. He pointed the gun at the brain of the elephant and fires.

As Orwell fires, the crowd breaks out in anticipation. Being hit by the shot, the elephant bends towards its lap and starts dribbling. Orwell fires the second shot, the elephant appears worse but doesn’t die. As he fires the final gunshot, the elephant shouts it out and falls, fast-moving in the field where he was placed. The elephant is still alive while Orwell shot him more and more but it seems to him that it has no effect on it. The elephant seems to be in great agony and is “helpless to live yet helpless to die”. Orwell, being unable to see the elephant to suffer, go away from the sight. He later heard that the elephant took almost half an hour to pass away and villagers take the meal off its bone shortly after its death.

Orwell’s killing of the monster remained a huge controversy. The owner of the elephant stayed heated, but then again as he was Indian, he has no legal alternative. The aged old people agreed with the Orwell’s killing of the elephant but for the younger one, it appears to be unsuitable to murder an elephant as it killed a coolie– a manual labor. For them, the life of an elephant was additional worth than a life of a coolie. On the one hand, Orwell thinks that he is fortunate that the monster murdered a coolie as it will give his act a lawful clarification while on the other hand, he wonders that anyone among his companions would assume that he murdered the elephant just not to look a fool.

Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell Literary Analysis

About the author:.

George Orwell was one of the most prominent writers of the twentieth century who was well-known for his essays, novels, and articles. His works were most of the times focused on social and political issues. His work is prominent among his contemporary writers because he changed the minds of people regarding the poor. His subject matters are; the miseries of the poor, their oppression by the elite class, and the ills of the British colonialism.

Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is a satirical essay on the British Imperialism.

The story is a first-person narrative in which the narrator describes his confused state of mind and his inability to decide and act without hesitation. The narrator is a symbol of British colonialism in Burma who, through a window to his thoughts, allegorically gives us an insight into the conflicting ideals of the system.

The essay is embedded with powerful imagery and metaphors. The tone of the essay is not static as it changes from a sadistic tone to a comic tone from time to time. The elephant in the story is the representation of the true inner self of the narrator. He has to kill it against his will in order to maintain the artificial persona he has to bear as a ruler.

The narrator has a sort of hatred for almost all the people that surround him. He hates the Burmese and calls them “evil spirited beasts”, he hates his job, he hates his superiors, he hates British colonialism and even hates himself sometimes for not being able to act according to his will.

On the surface, the essay is a narration of an everyday incident in a town but represents a very grave picture on a deeper level. Orwell satirizes the inhumane behavior of the colonizers towards the colonized and does so very efficiently by using the metaphor of the elephant.

The metaphor of the elephant can be interpreted in many ways. The elephant can also be considered to stand for the job of the narrator which has created a havoc in his life (as the elephant has created in the town). The narrator wants to get rid of it through any possible way and is ready to do anything to put an end to this misery. Also, the elephant is powerful and so is the narrator because of his position but both of them are puppets in the hands of their masters. Plus, they both are creating miseries in the lives of the locals.

Yet another interpretation of this metaphor can be that the elephant symbolizes the local colonized people. The colonizers are ready to kill any local who revolts against their rule just as the narrator kills the elephant which has defied the orders of its master.

Shooting an Elephant Main Themes

Following is the major theme of the essay Shooting an Elephant.

Ills of British Imperialism:

George Orwell, in the narrative essay Shooting an Elephant, expresses his feelings towards British imperialism. The British Raj did not care for anything but for their own material wealth and their ruling personas. The rulers were ready to take the life of any local who dared to stand or speak against their oppression. This behavior of the rulers made the locals full of hatred and mistrust. Therefore, a big gap was created between the colonizers and the colonized which was bad for both of them.

This theme strikes the reader throughout the essay. For instance, the narrator talks about “the dirty work of the empire”. He narrates the conditions of the prisoners in cells who are tortured in an inhumane way. This shows the behavior of the British Raj towards those who dared to stand against their oppression.

The narrator also uses bad adjectives for the locals like “yellow-faced” and even expresses his wish to kill one of them. He does on purpose i.e. to reflect on the point that the colonizers considered the colonizing low humans or probably lower than humans.

More From George Orwell

• Animal Farm

Shooting an Elephant

By george orwell, shooting an elephant study guide.

“ Shooting an Elephant ” is a narrative essay by George Orwell about a conflicted period of Orwell’s life while he works as a police officer for the British Empire in colonial Burma. He despises the British Empire, and its presence in Burma, as do the Burmese people. The Burmese people also naturally despise and ridicule Orwell, for, as policeman, he is the face of the Empire. Out of fear of humiliation, Orwell feels compelled to uphold an authoritative front. Orwell discusses this complex inner conflict and illustrates it through a story of killing an elephant.

The memoir centers on an incident in which Orwell takes it upon himself to control an angry elephant that has gone on a rampage through a bazaar. He has no desire to shoot the elephant, but believing he needs to appear in control in front of the Burmese people, he brings his rifle to the scene. Finding the elephant peacefully grazing, his inclination to kill it is even less; but a large crowd forms and he doesn’t want to reveal his softness or hesitation as it will give the crowd reason to laugh at him, and ultimately to see through his front of authority. He feels compelled to uphold this front, and as he contemplates the best way to kill the elephant without making a fool of himself, he analyzes his fear of being humiliated and how that is the essential fear of the Empire itself and of the white man in British Raj.

Killing the elephant turns out not to be easy at all. It takes multiple bullets to bring the giant animal down, and when it does finally collapse, it stays alive, bleeding, yet breathing. Orwell describes the scene in clear, unaffected prose, and he ultimately reveals his inability to do the decent thing and put elephant out of its misery. The crowd is thoroughly pleased by the entire scene. They’re also happy to come get the meat from the dying animal. In this way Orwell wins them over. But he walks away from the suffering elephant, leaving it to bleed to death and feeling shame.

The essay is at once an allegory and a personal memoir. It symbolizes the brutal attempt of the British colonizers to control a people; it also tells the story of a personal dilemma manifesting and playing out in a dramatic, violent scene.

Shooting an Elephant Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Shooting an Elephant is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

According to Orwell, he was “hated by large numbers of people” during his time in Burma. Why was he so hated? Support your answer using textual evidence.

Orwell is a policeman, a representative of the British regime and an occupier of Burma: he was the face of oppression and subjugation.

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been...

Dilemma of the Narrator

The narrator's dilemma was whether or not he should shoot the elephant. The elephant, which had recently been ravaging the bazaar and had killed a man in its rampage was now calm. Thus, Orwell, was torn between shooting the animal who was deemed...

Here was i, the white man with his gun,standing in front of the unarmed native crowd seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind . Please line explanation

The power dynamic of the colonizer-colonized is reversed in this instance as Orwell feels himself, not a puppet of the Empire, so much as a puppet of the crowd. It’s them for whom he must perform. In that way, they are the ones with power. This is...

Study Guide for Shooting an Elephant

Shooting an Elephant study guide contains a biography of George Orwell, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Shooting an Elephant
• Shooting an Elephant Summary
• Shooting an Elephant Video
• Character List

Essays for Shooting an Elephant

Shooting an Elephant essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell.

• George Orwell: Modernism and Imperialism in "Shooting an Elephant"
• Wibbly, Wobbly, Timey, Wimey Paradoxes: Rhetoric and Contradiction in "Shooting an Elephant"
• Shifting the Gaze from the Colonizer to the Colonized in Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” and Adichie’s “The Headstrong Historian”

Lesson Plan for Shooting an Elephant

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Shooting an Elephant
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Shooting an Elephant Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Shooting an Elephant

• Introduction