George Orwell Shooting An Elephant Essay

Shooting an Elephant was a short story written in 1950 by George Orwell. The story is an excerpt from his book called, “1984”. In this story, Orwell explains a situation in which he was working as an officer in Lower Burma, where he was forced to shoot an elephant that was having an attack of must. In this story, he uses very good symbolism, including the elephant, the gun and multiple shots he fired, and a dead unskilled worker, called a coolie. In the excerpt, Orwell uses the elephant that he shot to symbolize the British Empire, the world power that he worked for but also greatly disagreed with. The British Empire was very resilient and in some cases, just like the elephant, could be violent, and very brutal. The British metaphorically, (and sometimes literally) trampled the people of Burma, and left their homes and towns in ruin. When Orwell was taking the elephant down, it took multiple shots to finally kill the beast. This symbolizes the multiple events that it took to finally take down the British Empire, which I will elaborate more on in paragraph 4. …show more content…
The people in Burma were beaten, jailed and treated like animals under the rule of the British. In the passage, Orwell states, “The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lockups, the grey, cowed faces of the long term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboo-…” (Pg. 323) This is just a small example of how the people in Burma were treated. Another thing that the dead coolie could represent could be Orwell’s spirit. Although he doesn’t come right out and say this, I believe this could be a reason why he disagrees with the British Empire yet continues to work for them. Among other reasons, of