Rhetorical Analysis Of Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell

Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is an essay about his experiences in Burma as a sub-divisional police offer while working for the British Empire in the 1920’s where it had imposed its power onto the Burmese. Orwell felt this strong disagreement with imperialism because how oppressed the Burmese were, but in a way of guilt and sympathy. To better understand what imperialism means we must get a clear definition of it; imperialism is the policy of extending power of a nation over another nation; with the addition of the possibility of economic and political gains through control. With Orwell having the position of being a police officer, he plays the role of being an oppressor and; and because of this, the Burmese look at him and make him – and other Europeans ¬– a target of hatred and frustration. And Orwell also uses a plethora of rhetorical strategies to explain his own sympathies and frustrations with the Burmese, but uses the elephant

as an item to describe imperialism as a vile thing.
Orwell as well as many Europeans that resided in Burma, during the time of when England has complete rule over India, had been targets of frustration and hatred. Orwell states one of these examples on page 295 of his essay, “I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, pretty kind of way of anti-European feeling was very bitter.” Then we see a very obvious line, “As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.” A third example, when a European woman ventured through the bazaars by themselves they are not graciously welcomed with affection, but instead they encounter betel juice - sliced betel palm seeds put onto pepper leaves that are native in South Asia, and then are chewed for their alkaloid properties– spat onto their dresses (Orwell 295). Another example, perhaps ironic, is how the young Buddhists priests would jeer – rude gestures and remarks – towards Europeans. All of this for this for Orwell was distressing and perplexing, but he knew that he hatred Imperialism as much as the lot did – the Burmese and other agents of the British Empire sent to do the dirty work.
The dirty work is described in this example, “The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces…all these oppressed me with intolerable sense of guilt. They didn’t like having to do these things that they hated, but the Empire cared only for itself not the people within its system.
By the time the essay reaches the point of elephant, it is has become evident to Orwell what imperialism really is, and thus provides a plentiful amount of images. When the report of a rampaging elephant comes through the telephone to Orwell, he knows that he would have to make a decision that will end in the death of the elephant. We know this because in the third paragraph he takes his old .44 Winchester rifle in hopes of intimidating the elephant through terrorem – a Latin word that means to fear. He knows deep inside that he will have to subdue the creature, but he remains hopeful at first because he doesn’t want to kill it. When he arrives, there was a Burmese sub-inspector and several Indian constables in the town where the elephant was last seen; right after reports of it damaging property, killed a cow, and raided an entire fruit stand by eating its stock. Since the elephant represents imperialism and its power, it best to say that what it did is what plenty of despotic governments do – they conquer, raid the land of its resources, and crushes anything in its way. And we do see this crushing in the form of a dead Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, lying face down into the deep mud in a paralyzing contorted way.
After a horrifying and gruesome image, a decision by Orwell has been reached: he must take care of the elephant for it poses a threat for the locals. On page 298, he sends an orderly to a friend’s home to fetch an elephant rifle and ammunition. Another thing, when he had the weapon the town’s people excitingly cheered because they wanted him to kill the elephant – not for the reason for the death and destruction, but they longingly wanted the flesh. Then the pressure began to build, he had seen the elephant gracefully eating “bunches” of grass near a paved road. He figured since the elephant wasn’t being hostile it wasn’t best to shoot him because “ it is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge costly piece of machinery – and obviously one not ought to do it if it can possibly be avoided” (Orwell 298). And he just wanted to just watch him just in case of the sheer chance that the beast would were to become, in Orwell’s words, savage again. But this was soon to change because the Burmese were expecting him to play his role – the police officer who kills the elephant – and he knew that if he didn’t do it, he would be labeled a coward. This external pressure happens in this example, “I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garnish clothes – faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot.”
Orwell soon figures out what power – because of imperialism – for him as a white man, a European, means when he is surrounded by two-thousand unarmed Burmese.

His then faces reality and then has a sudden epiphany, “… I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellowed faces behind” (Orwell 299). He never had a choice in the first place, like the Burmese, for they are just mere puppets on strings being controlled from a power thousands of miles away. Then he mentions that “when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy…for this condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives” expect of him” (Orwell 299). This tidbit basically shows us that it is not the government who rules the people, but it’s the people native to the land who are in control – quite the opposite for what is supposed to happen. From the very beginning, he never had the choice of whether to kill the elephant or not, the Burmese

did.
In the last remaining paragraphs, Orwell tries to figure out whether how he should shoot the elephant without getting himself killed or the Burmese for that matter. And them once he found his plan of attack, he brandished the rifle and headed down the road for; which only intentions to get better aim to shoot it in the head. After the trigger was shot, he said he didn’t hear the bang or kick, but he knew that he had been successful when there was this “devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. But it took several more attempts to make the creature fall to the ground, it was tough, it refused to be taken down. After what seemed about forever and after a lengthy description of the elephant dying, Orwell ending up leaving because he couldn’t stand there and watch it die in agony any longer. It took the elephant another half an hour before it died, and once it did, the Burmese stripped it for its precious flesh; leaving only bones in the wake. This dying can be characterized as the Empire slowly dying, but still trying to hang on with all it has, but once it does fail, there will be “young empires…that are going to supplant it,” meaning, that some other power will end up replacing it, whether it be good or bad.
I believe that with what Orwell presented in his experiences with the Burmese and the elephant, I have concluded that imperialism is a terrible thing that brings on terrible grief, guilt, hate, and agony to those inside of it. It doesn’t bring people together by joining their cultures, politics, and ideas; it instead forces them apart in the worse ways. I also saw that power isn’t everything when you have it because you can still be manipulated by those you seek to control. And referring to an earlier passage in the essay, being a tyrant means one gives up their own freedoms by destroying it – he feels nothing but for control. I felt like Orwell explained the behind scenes look into imperialism and it makes it his own story works.