George Orwell 1984 Individualism Analysis

Individualism is a right that is among the most heatedly protected. It certainly depends on the culture, as some are more collectivist based; however, in the Western society, the individual is almost idolized. Inspirational figures are deemed that way for their ability to not only advocate the individualism of others, but also of themselves. The greats are those who understand who they are, something that individualists desperately race towards. Why is it so appealing? What about the fortified singular is so pleasing? The answer may lie in an analysis of different literary works on the subject. More known for his dystopian pieces, George Orwell is not unfamiliar to the importance of the individual. Orwell’s 1984 is a dystopian novel that warns …show more content…
The difficulties of the speaker are established from the very first sentence. White skin is the bullet-proof barrier between the narrator and the people of Burma, and this separation brings on more persecution to the typically powerful white man. “...[they did not] have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans” (Orwell 1). In the beginning, the physical setting is not so distinctly defined as the social setting--persecution makes its way to the narrator and people like him from every corner of the Burmese public, ranging from dirty looks to spoken jeers. When the story nears the place of the elephant, the physical setting is more clearly described. The speaker makes his way the the “very poor quarter”, where the village is made of dirt roads and dilapidated huts (2). An implicit distinction is established by the speaker’s manner of describing his surroundings; every time he describes the Burma around him, he makes sure to use words that separate himself from the squalid environment. Depicting this area as poor and struggling elevates the speaker to a position high enough to be able to simply describe the environment and not be immersed in it. The presentation of the physical setting indirectly justifies the social setting that the speaker expresses frustration with in the beginning of the story because it establishes the innate tendency of imperialism that the speaker has unknowingly inherited from the empire that he wants to rebel against. The setting is also a representation of environmental influence, which ties in with the presented conflicts of the story. Shooting an Elephant’s plot structure revolves around the conflict between the speaker and himself. Explicitly, the conflict is presented as one of the speaker against the society, with the speaker battling the Burmese prejudice as well as trying to earn their approval; however, the