George Orwell's Shooting and Elephant and William Carlos Williams's The Use of Force

George Orwell’s short story “Shooting and elephant” and William Carlos Williams “The use of force” both share the same theme which is violence. While these stories are very much different they share many similarities. They both commit an act of violence and those acts have different effects on the main characters of the stories.

“The use of force” by William Carlos Williams is about a doctor who makes a home visit and wants to diagnose this child because he thinks she has Diphtheria. The doctor must examine her throat but it is not an easy task because it becomes a conflict between the doctor and the child. She does not let him examine her. The doctor becomes irritated uses force on her to pry open the girl’s mouth. “Then I grasped the child’s head with my left hand and tried to get the wooden tongue depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched teeth, desperately! But now I had also gone furious- at a child.” (1210) “The use of force” has a theme on violence because the doctor uses violence to open the child’s mouth. He got angry at the child when she was not complying with his orders, the doctor wanted to find out what the problem was and it resulted in him using force to find out.

“Shooting an elephant” by George Orwell is about a police officer and he talks about his most important event and that is when he had to shoot an elephant that had gone rampant throughout the village. “It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit stall and devoured the stock.”(845) The people were already very upset and he was called to reinstate order. The theme of “Shooting an elephant is violence as well because in the end the police officer shot the elephant. “When I pulled the trigger I did ...

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...ain acceptance by others. He did it so he would not look bad in front of the villagers. In “The use of force”, doctors are generally perceived as people who are kind and trustworthy. However in this story the doctor instead seems to instead be someone who caused intentional pain to the child. The doctor did not need to; there are many ways the doctor could have diagnosed the child in a proper way.

In the end “Shooting an elephant” and “The use of force” both used violence to get what they wanted. Both characters from the stories had to go beyond their normal to achieve something, because of the personal connection for the obsession that they wanted. In “The use of force” it was to properly diagnose the child and see what she had which was diphtheria, and in “Shooting an elephant” he wanted acceptance by the people, he wanted to avoid looking like a fool.