SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT

Shooting an Elephant

Shooting an Elephant

Introduction

In Shooting an Elephant, an autobiographical essay published in 1936, George Orwell speaks of time spent as a police officer in a Burmese town. At close quarters with the dirty work of imperialism the young Orwell had grown deeply disillusioned with the British Empire. At the same time he was possessed of a “anger against the evil spirited beasts who tried to make his work unattainable.” Torn between hatred of Empire and resentment of the local population Orwell is a solitary and conflicted figure who, in the end, acts not out of a sense of duty but a fear of looking ridiculous. As Orwell reflects on the existential quandaries of his younger days he is able to retroactively reconcile the incoherence of this earlier experience to a lack of education and an isolation that left him unable to gain perspective. He writes, that the British Empire is declining, still less did he know that it is a deal better than the newer empires that are going to displace it” (Becnel, 2011).

Orwell chronicles the moral ambiguities of imperialism with keen insight and existential depth. Nearly a century later we are plagued with many of the same concerns Orwell faced. Systemic inequality and racism make us uncomfortable when we are aware of them, but our awareness often breeds guilt rather than action. Those of us who have inherited the legacy of the colonizing people are often bound in the strange admixture of pity and contempt towards indigenous people, unable or unwilling to radically identify with their concerns. And, at least in the Anglophone world, the British Empire hangs about in the background; the benign ghost of civilization`s yesteryear. If not an unambiguously good thing the sensibility that the British Empire was a lesser evil remains promised; a compromised yet legitimate authority (Becnel, 2011).

Descendants of colonized and colonizing peoples, sharing the same geographical spaces, continue to live in a world shaped by history's violent divisions. Even more disturbingly we continue to feel the effects of a history partial and biased in its telling that it continues to undermine the political will and dignity of peoples and nations across the globe (Becnel, 2011).

Discussion

On the basis of experience of shooter with Indian imperial police (1922-1927), “shooting an Elephant” was written on Moulmein, in Lower Burma. The narrator has already started questioning the existence of British in Far East. He states that in theory and seceret, he was for each Burmese and he was not in favor of their oppressors, the british. The narrator describes himself as a young less educated, who bitterally hates his work (Quinn, 2009).

His job, in this instance, is to respond to a report of the death of a local man who was killed by an elephant in musth. He finds the man “lying on his belly with crucified arms and head harshly perversed to the side.” The corpse grins with “an expression of unendurable agony.” At this point, he feels the collective will of the crowd ...