The Elephant Vanishes

Face-Saving Sucks In “Shooting an Elephant”, George Orwell shares his regret of harming an innocent elephant just to save face. If more people were aware of the extent of damage that face-saving causes, maybe they would stop and even encourage others to stop as well. Face-saving starts with peer pressure, society rules, and common lifestyles that create violence, results in injury, harm, or death, and is often regretted once the act is completed. The violence that peer pressure, society…

In the essay “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, the author is faced with a very conflicting situation that overall changes how he views himself and how others view him. Orwell believes that confession does not ease one’s guilt about a misdeed; this idea is shown through the tone of penitence and the metaphor of imperialism. Years after committing a wrong action, Orwell confesses his wrongdoing, but feels no weight lifted off of his shoulders. He feels just as guilty writing about it as…

Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" and Gideon's "No Witchcraft for Sale" both have one thing in common. They are each on the opposite ends of imperialism spectrum. Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is an autobiographical essay about himself as a British police officer who works in the town of Moulmein located in Burma. He hates the Burmese authorities and the natives. Orwell is also under constant subject of the imperialists. Orwell states, "All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the…

How might conditions for successful fossilization differ between mammals and plants? How might a fossil be formed? What is the difference between mammals and plants being fossilized? What might happen to the fossil? Many things need to happen when mammals and plants fossilize. They cannot be disturbed, it cannot be brought to the surface until completely fossilized, and it depends on where they died. These things are very important when a mammal or plant are being fossilized. The organism…

For what reason do elephant seals come ashore during the spring and summer? This and many other ocean questions are asked at competitions of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl. I enjoy academic competitions like this because they allow me to share the knowledge I have accumulated over the years. In April 2016, myself and several friends travelled to Morehead City, North Carolina, to compete in the national competition of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl. Earlier, in February, we had emerged…

Question #5 Woo, the narrator, was able to connect with her dead mother and accept her Chinese heritage by fulfilling her mother’s dream of returning to China and finding the mother’s twin daughters, Woo’s half-sisters. As soon as the narrator’s train left the Hong Kong’s border to enter Shenzhen, as her mother, Suyuan, predicted, Woo could feel and see she was becoming Chinese, stating, “I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course,…

normal. But, it truly depends on each person’s perspective. In “The Blind Men and the Elephant” by John Godfrey Saxe, several different blind men feel different parts of a single elephant. They then try to relate their discovery to something else they know. For example, one blind man touches the elephant’s tail and exclaims that the creature is most similar to a rope. Another touches the ear and compares the elephant to a fan. This poem states in the last stanza, “Each in his own opinion…

clear goal or conflict other than he, like everyone else, has no practical conclusion as to where the elephant went. Here, the author stylistically does something that wasn’t present in the other short stories of the collection. Murakami blurs the lines between reality and the bizarre. “Looking through the vent, I had the feeling that a different, chilling kind of time was flowing through the elephant house-but nowhere else.” This makes the story appealing to both the practical and the…

In today’s presentation, David and Laura spoke about the themes of xenophobia and imperialism explored in the book of short stories “The Elephant Vanishes” written by Haruki Murakami. I thought it was incredibly interesting the way that they tied back the protagonists and their vulnerability, lack of agency, and isolation to Japan and what it went through as a culture leading up to World War II. They also spoke of Japanese culture and whether or not these stories served as a commentary about…

In 1984, Winston and the rest of the people cannot think what they want without punishment. If they feel a certain way, the government considers it a crime and the person who thinks or feels differently than what the party wants, is tortured or vanishes.…