Shooting An Elephant Essay
Essay on ‘Shooting an Elephant’ by George Orwell
“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.“ . This quotation from the short story “Shooting an Elephant” shows the impact of the British Empire on India during the colonial period. The main character, who is a British police officer, serving in Burma shows a big hatred to both sides. We follow him develop into shooting an Elephant.
The protagonist of the story, an Anglo-Indian police officer in Burma, receives a call telling him there is an elephant, in burst, loose running directly through a village. When arriving to the scene, a man has been trampled to death by the Elephant - this results in the protagonist sending an orderly to go and get a riffle. At this very moment we know there is no turning back, we have reached point of no return.
When actually finding the elephant it is peacefully …show more content…
Firstly as a way of predicting later events outcome; just before leaving to find the elephant, the main character comments on the weather: “I remember it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.” (own marking, p. 112 ll. 14-15) the words marked with black are very negatively loaded, and leaves us with the feeling of something bad going to happen - also the sentence is written in dative which makes the prediction stand clearer. The setting also functions as a way of showing emotions. When the main character tells us about the field the elephant had chosen to graze on, he tells about the thousands of yards of rice fields:” [...] a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass.” (p. 113 ll. 33-35). He walks on a swampy field, probably making him even more annoyed about the situation and this is expressed - again - with negatively loaded
“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.“ . This quotation from the short story “Shooting an Elephant” shows the impact of the British Empire on India during the colonial period. The main character, who is a British police officer, serving in Burma shows a big hatred to both sides. We follow him develop into shooting an Elephant.
The protagonist of the story, an Anglo-Indian police officer in Burma, receives a call telling him there is an elephant, in burst, loose running directly through a village. When arriving to the scene, a man has been trampled to death by the Elephant - this results in the protagonist sending an orderly to go and get a riffle. At this very moment we know there is no turning back, we have reached point of no return.
When actually finding the elephant it is peacefully …show more content…
Firstly as a way of predicting later events outcome; just before leaving to find the elephant, the main character comments on the weather: “I remember it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.” (own marking, p. 112 ll. 14-15) the words marked with black are very negatively loaded, and leaves us with the feeling of something bad going to happen - also the sentence is written in dative which makes the prediction stand clearer. The setting also functions as a way of showing emotions. When the main character tells us about the field the elephant had chosen to graze on, he tells about the thousands of yards of rice fields:” [...] a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass.” (p. 113 ll. 33-35). He walks on a swampy field, probably making him even more annoyed about the situation and this is expressed - again - with negatively loaded