Burma

George Orwell, the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in India in 1903 during the time when the country was under British colonial rule. He moved to England when he was very young, but being born in India during such a hard time for India caused him family many issues so he grew up with a less than satisfactory childhood. His place of birth might explain why he kept England as itself in 1984 when he gave all the other countries different names for the new dystopian world he created. He…

George Orwell was born Eric Blair in Colonial India in 1903 to Richard, a member of the Colonial Police, and Ida Blair. (Sheldon 16) His mother took him and his sister back to England in 1904. He was raised almost entirely by his mother while his father finished his term with the colonial police, so much that Eric did not see his father until 1907. As a young child he was not very social, so his mother encouraged him to read and sent him to a preparatory school, St. Cyprian's at age eight.…

George Orwell’s way of writing politically “What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art.” George Orwell presented this idea in his work “Why I Write”. This idea was used throughout Orwell’s life, as a reporter, writer, essayist, critic, he used his sharp insight and writing to view, and record this world that he lives in, and made many predictions about the world he lived in. Orwell is often referred as the wintry conscience of a…

In relation to the English cop in George Orwell’s writing, “Shooting An Elephant”, I've also experienced a great deal of pressure from my peers. Every time I make a presentation, I always feel like the people watching genuinely don't care about my opinions and actions. They sit there with their mouths drooling and their eyes everywhere, but on me. Needless to say, it gets my heart racing and my mind endlessly imagining the outcomes. I question myself with “Are they going to like it?” In general,…

“I’d rather die in Bangladesh than be forced to return to Myanmar,” says Aisha, 19. Aisha, a Rohingya woman, was raped by soldiers that were attacking her village in Myanmar. The Myanmar soldiers violently killed her son, as the family attempted to flee the violence in Myanmar. “They threw my son in the air and cut him with a machete. Then they threw petrol bombs and burned down our houses,” reported by UNICEF. This is only one story of a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh. Aisha’s story is not an…

Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is a tragic short essay about the Burman’s and the control that the British Empire brought upon them called imperialism. The Burmese reside in Southeast Asia which seems to be a world away from Europe, and the British Empire. But the thing about imperialism is that it is a power that is extended far beyond the country’s borders, the country’s power and influence can be enforced through diplomacy or military style. The Burman are unhappy, in fact, they are…

Irene Finel-Honigman reveals a conflict between man and nature in the novel “The Plague” by Albert Camus as well as the striking similarities between Nazi Germany and the city struck by the fictionally plague, Oran. Her examination, titled, “Oran: Protagonist, Myth, and Allegory” centers on the idea of Oran the city being exiled from the rest of the world and cut off from all normalcy. Finel-Honigman first focuses on “man’s relationship with his environment” (75). She states that Oran is…

1946 book Harp of Burma, Michio Takeyama wrote about the adventures of a unique company of Japanese soldiers and their adventures across Burma. These soldiers returned home from World War II so cheerful and energetic that civilians thought the company had extra rations, but instead had kept up their morale through singing (Takeyama 1). Due to the book being published just a couple of years after the end of World War II and a focus of the book being the Buddhist culture of Burma, Takeyama…

Over the years people have all faced many life changing decisions. Once a conclusion had been met and the decision had been made, many of us don’t take the time to look back upon our choice. Reflecting on whether an external influence may have affected our preferred option can also arise questions about our morals at the time of the decision. We can see this quite clearly in George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”. His popular essay uses imagery to recount a moral dilemma he had faced early in…

India The Elephant, the Frogs, and the Toad The big elephant named Blackmound came everyday to the pond to get a drink of water but each time he went, he crushed many frogs. One day, the frogs went to the wise today, Blear Eye and asked him what to do about the horrid situation. Bleary Eye chose one frog name Lightfoot to approach Blackmound next time he arrived and have the boldness to tell him that he was crushing the frogs. Lghtfoot obeyed and approach Blackmound explaining the situation.…