George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” is an essay about an Englishman who lives in Burma. The narrator of this essay is a police officer in a town called Moulmein. When an elephant gets loose in the town and is aggressive due to a rage of must the narrator is forced to make a decision to shoot and kill the elephant or to let it live. Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” depicts the influence of power through symbolism, imagery, and past reflection. Orwell uses this depiction of power to show his readers the negativity of imperialistic power.
Orwell uses symbolism throughout this essay in order to further his presentation of the negativity of imperialistic power. There are multiple symbols in this essay, but the most important of them is the elephant. The elephant is a symbol of voiceless cultures that get overpowered by Britain’s imperialistic power. Like the voiceless cultures, the elephant at first seems like a threat to the town but once the narrator took a closer look, he found out that the elephant was instead harmless and simply wanted to be left alone. When the narrator asks some Burmans around him what they thought of the elephant’s behavior they responded, “he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went to close to him” (739). The elephant at this point is harmless, and although at first look it seemed very harmful it is clear that now it is safe as long as it is not confronted. Earlier when the narrator was looking for the elephant he began thinking about the predicament he was in and how it compares to the East, “That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of the events the vaguer it becomes” (737). Orwell is using this symbolism between the elephant and the people of the East to further push the reader towards realizing the issues regarding imperialistic power. The British Empire simply ruled over neighboring countries without taking a second glance to realize that like this elephant, the different cultures were harmless and simply would want to be left alone.
Another symbol that Orwell uses in order to show the negativity of power was the narrator’s rifle. The rifle in this essay is a symbol to represent military power within an imperialistic government. Before the narrator was given the rifle, he was not respected, and instead was a laughingstock in the town. However, once he received the rifle it gave him power and respect. The narrator even refers to the rifle as magical, “They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching” (738). Orwell displays the importance of the rifle and shows how the rifle instantly give the narrator power. Nevertheless, the power from the rifle also placed an impossible burden onto the narrator. Once he had been given the power along with the rifle, he was instantly put into a position in which he could not escape. With the power came a responsibility to uphold and the need to use the power he had been given. Once that narrator realizes the position, he has been put into he begins to realize how power influences everything and he begins to think about the English Empire and their power,
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 domination in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crown—seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality, I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. (738)
Orwell in this moment of the essay is raising the issue of military power within an imperialistic empire. Paul Melia writes in her article about the way that power can be influenced in her article, “The policeman’s view of the situation is that it would be wrong to shoot the elephant as it no longer represents any danger and would be a considerable loss to its owner. He shoots it cause of what he perceives to be the desire of the crowd” (16). Melia is addressing the issue of power, and the influence of power. The person with the power in the end is the one to make the choice, but they can be influenced by others, like the narrator was. The power that has been given to the narrator simply comes from his rifle. Yet, so quickly does that power go to his head and so quickly does that power become to strongest power in the room. He goes from not even being respected to becoming the most powerful because of the rifle he was given. This symbol relates to the imperialistic power and brings to attention the fact that the most powerful one in the room is the one with the military force. Orwell is showing the danger behind a power that strong.
Orwell also uses imagery in order to display the negativity of imperialistic power.
The main scene in which Orwell uses imagery to show the negativity of imperialistic power is when the narrator shoots the elephant. An important factor of when the narrator aims, and shoots is the ignorance that he has with where to aim. Because the narrator did not know the proper area to shoot the elephant the elephant experiences a tragic and slow death. The imagery that Orwell uses to describe how the elephant looked after being shot was extremely graphic, “He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down” (739). Because the elephant and rifle are both important symbols in this essay this imagery is extremely important to Orwell’s argument. The way that the elephant responds to the bullet wound represents how cultures that are under imperialistic rule respond. They become paralyzed because of the power that is placed upon them. Kenneth Keskinen in his article also comments on Orwell’s use of imagery in this scene, “The paragraph has its own climax; the tension is developed and heightened as we wait for the elephant to die; we feel the terribleness of his death” (673). Keskinen is addressing the feeling that this imagery invokes in its readers. James A. Tyner addresses the symbolism that the imagery of the elephant dying brings to mind in his article,
Landscape and the Mask of Self in George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’”,
In this scene both the elephant and the narrator are trapped in a liminal space, neither of their choosing. The elephant, on one hand, is caught between life and death, its existence held in temporary abeyance. Orwell’s narrator, on the other hand is powerless to ‘fix’ the elephant. He can no longer give the elephant life but, disturbingly, he is also unable to give the animal death. (265)
The symbolism that comes from what Tyner writes is very important to this essay. Even though the rifle gave the narrator power to shoot the elephant, he is still unable to use that power to kill the elephant. Orwell’s graphic imagery in this scene bring the symbolism of the elephant and the symbolism of the rifle together in a way that the reader is see what they represent in a very vivid and emotional picture.
The use of past reflection is another way that Orwell further shows the negativity of imperialistic power. The narrator of this essay appears to be an older self, looking bad on this incident as a memory. He is telling the story in past tense. There is importance in his past reflection, one being that this incident was so impactful to him that he found it important enough to reflect on it in his older age. There are multiple instances in this essay that he seemed to come to a lot of realizations during this time, one of those realizations being the power of imperialism. The narrator mentions that this story was a moment of enlightenment for him, “One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism—the real motives for which despotic governments act” (736). Without Orwell putting this essay in past tense, with the narrator retelling his story, the reader would not have realized the true importance that this story holds to the narrator. The use of past reflection also gives this essay a sense of realness and can make the reader put themselves in the narrator’s shoes. J.E. Spence addresses the realness of this essay in his article, “George Orwell”,
This is Orwell at his most perceptive and here the reader feels disposed to believe him, if only because the description of the crowd scene, his own embarrassing situation and the admixture motives for killing the elephant is so mercilessly accurate… but would these young men have acted any differently in Orwell’s place? I suspect not. And this is why Orwell’s analysis of this particular aspect of Imperialism seems valid. (20)
The fact that this is a past narration makes this story more believable to the reader. Throughout the entire short story, the narrator thinks of his young and naïve self, realizing the way that he came to this enlightenment without even realizing it. The importance of this story to the narrator holds its value in the fact that he truly learned the negativity of imperialistic power through an elephant and a rifle.
George Orwell displays the negativity of imperialistic power through his essay, “Shooting an Elephant”. The use of symbolism through the elephant and the rifle, imagery, and past reflection further presented Orwell’s argument against imperialistic power.
Work Cited
Keskinen, Kenneth. “‘Shooting an Elephant’ - An Essay to Teach.” The English Journal, vol. 55,
no. 6, 1966, pp. 669–675. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/811491.
Melia, Paul. “Imperial Orwell / Orwell Imperial.” Atlantis, vol. 37, no. 2, 2015, pp. 11-
25. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24757780.
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant”. The Norton Anthology English Literature, general
editor, Stephen Greenblatt, vol. E, 10th ed., Norton, 2019, pp. 735-40.
SPENCE, J. E. “GEORGE ORWELL.” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, no.
13, 1959, pp. 15–26. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41801135.
Tyner, James A. “Landscape and the Mask of Self in George Orwell's 'Shooting an
Elephant'.” Area, vol. 37, no. 3, 2005, pp. 260–267. JSTOR,
