George Orwell uses first person narrative, irony, and the story as a whole in both a hanging and shooting an elephant in order to challenge a part of his society that he opposed. In the 1920's George Orwell was an officer in the British Indian imperial police force. He wrote Shooting an Elephant so that people would understand how imperialism was bad for both the people being colonized and the people doing the colonizing. The story takes place in Burma and at the time Burma was controlled by the British government. There was an incident where an elephant broke free from its owner and went on a rampage destroying things and even killing a person. The narrator was called to deal with the situation and in the end he ended up killing the elephant. However, the narrator did not necessarily want to kill the elephant. He was put in a tough
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This is a huge aspect of the story because it gives the readers insight to what the narrator is thinking. It made it oblivious that imperialism ultimately controlled him and his actions. Through the first person narrative we know that he only brought a gun for protection, if the elephant was still out of control. We also know that when he saw the elephant he had no intention of shooting it because it wasn't doing any harm. Then we see the narrator being pressured into taking the elephants life because he notices that all of the natives are expecting him to kill it. Finally, we see the narrator completely conform to the pressure that was upon him and kill the beast. None of this insight would have been possible if Orwell would have told the story from a different perspective. The readers would not have seen the narrator slowly change his mind. We wouldn't of really been able to see that he conformed to this pressure because being accepted by the native people was more important to him than taking the life of an
This is a huge aspect of the story because it gives the readers insight to what the narrator is thinking. It made it oblivious that imperialism ultimately controlled him and his actions. Through the first person narrative we know that he only brought a gun for protection, if the elephant was still out of control. We also know that when he saw the elephant he had no intention of shooting it because it wasn't doing any harm. Then we see the narrator being pressured into taking the elephants life because he notices that all of the natives are expecting him to kill it. Finally, we see the narrator completely conform to the pressure that was upon him and kill the beast. None of this insight would have been possible if Orwell would have told the story from a different perspective. The readers would not have seen the narrator slowly change his mind. We wouldn't of really been able to see that he conformed to this pressure because being accepted by the native people was more important to him than taking the life of an