In the short story “Shooting an Elephant,” George Orwell used diction to show how the tone changed throughout the story. First, Orwell uses words like “hated” and “bitter” to describe the negative detached tone of how people react to police officers. The reader begins to see how hated the man is by society. Next, the author begins to tell that the man was asked to go kill an elephant. Orwell uses words like “ happy” and “excited” to show how much the minds of the people changed from hating the police officer to him being worth watching. The tone of the story changes from that of negativity to one of excitement. In the spur of the moment, the man was compelled to shoot the elephant and did not think anything of the fact.
