Summary Of Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell

Sometimes the smallest, most forgettable events can create a strong, everlasting, and unforgettable connection to a far larger, more important concept. Sometimes the most complicated and abstract ideas explain the most seemingly uncomplicated concepts, and simple ideas explain the most seemingly complicated and abstract concepts. In Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell argues two things. One of these things is small; the other is large. However, both are explained by one seemingly insignificant event. The small thing is shooting an elephant, and the large thing is how a person’s pride often forces them to give into the pressure from others.

At the surface, “Shooting an Elephant” is about, well, shooting an elephant. Orwell narrates the whole
More specifically, how a person’s pride often forces them to give into peer pressure, regardless of how their thoughts about what their crowd wants. In Orwell’s case, this is shooting the elephant. He doesn’t want to shoot the elephant as he writes over and over again, but he still does. He still does because of his audience of villagers. The villagers want the great beast dead, and only he doesn’t. His thoughts are irrelevant. They do not matter as he looks back at the crowd of thousands of expecting faces. Orwell describes his thoughts at the moment as, “The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.” Orwell continues to consider turning back, but his mind is slowly made up at thought of the crowd laughing at him. He moves towards the elephant “...Not thinking particularly of my own skin, but of the watchful yellow faces behind.” and he kills it. He gives into the pressure of his audience and does what they want, despite his own disgust and regret for what he did. He closes with the final this final thought, “ I wonder whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking like a