Shooting An Elephant

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Recommended: Critical Analysis of Shooting an Elephant

“The futility of the white man's dominion in the East” this is the main topic discussed by George Orwell in his book Shooting an elephant. In this case the two main characters within the story are the native Burmans and a white English man, being the English man a police officer. Both characters work with different characteristics in terms of how they relate with others and how they respond to others actions. This way, different situations were exposed to the characters in order to know their reactions regarding the other people. But the main situation of the story is as the name of the book presents when a police man is forced to shoot an elephant, but the main reason for this action was the pressure of a Burmese crowd following the British man, not the need of …show more content…

Taking in account that the word oppressed is used not in its literary sense but in a psychological meaning, the white man is psychologically dominated by the Burmese crowd. That was astonished of seen a white man shooting an elephant. Then, a relation is stated, while the police man controls the Burmese people by him role within the story, the Burmese people have the power to dominate the police man psychologically. Each social group represented use “power” in order to benefit themselves, in this case the police man use the power that him work gives him, while the Burmese crowd use to enjoy for some moment. The book shows how the Burmese people laugh of the police officer and how this affects his attitude, then how this affects his actions. But if you stop to analyze the role of each character in this specific situation you realize that who have a real social power is the police man that in this case loses him power because he’s alone. And, the Burmese people don’t have a significant social power, but then they gain some power because they are in

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