George Orwell Shooting The Elephant Analysis

1. Orwell shoots the elephant because the two thousand native people standing behind him expect him to. They want revenge for the man it killed, the meat the carcass will provide, and the entertainment of watching the shooting. “The people expected it of me and I had got to do it” he writes. There is a suggestion that if he decided not to shoot the elephant, both he and the empire would suffer a loss of prestige, but the main concern in Orwell’s mind is the “long struggle not to be laughed at”. He is even afraid to “test” the animal’s mood by going closer for fear it might attack and kill him before he could shoot, therefore giving the crowd a sight it would enjoy as much as the murder of the beast. Orwell says that he did not intend to shoot