Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell Essay

In two excellent piece of literature, “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell and “Offensive Play” by Gladwell, they present effective arguments criticizing the society.

“Shooting an Elephant” by Orwell argues on what is the true nature of imperialism. The theme of this article is to show how morals and the laws of imperialism influenced his decision to pull the trigger. Orwell knew it was morally wrong to shoot the elephant, however, he let natives to pressure him into doing so in order to prevent being humiliated and make the British Empire look powerful. The thesis is effective because it shows the irony of power, how something big and powerful as the British Empire could be reduced to being controlled by something small as unarmed natives.

Throughout the story, he writes with a calm attitude with a hint of frustration and uncertainty. The article opens with introductory paragraphs where he expresses his hateful opinions on the natives, his job in Burma, and the imperialism in the general. In the body paragraphs, these opinions apply with the shooting the elephant situation. To conclude the magazine article, the author presents with critics who praise and criticize his actions as an effort to show differing perspectives. Finally, Orwell leaves his action up to the readers to choose to agree with him or not.

“Offensive Play” by Gladwell claims that football is no different than dogfighting. This thesis is then pushed by providing several examples. A notable example, football, although may be a very violent sport, will never die as “long as fans stand and cheer” (BLAH). The same could be said and applied to the dogfighting. This accurate analogy, combined with real-world studies and statistics, pushes the thesis to become an effective argument. The theme, or the main point, is that football is a sport that can seriously damage its players’ mental