Shooting An Elephant Figurative Language Essay

In the short story, “Shooting an Elephant” the author, George Orwell, uses figurative language supporting his points telling a story in which he shoots and kills an elephant that was out of control in Moulmein, located in lower Burma. (Orwell, 1950) Orwell is a sub-divisional police officer of the town, which was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. He explains in the story how he was influenced with peer pressure, and forced to kill an elephant even though he did not feel it was right. (Orwell, 1950) He displays his view of imperialism explaining his thoughts of the death of the elephant. Orwell’s purpose of writing the essay is to show the evil of imperialism and how it made up his mind that imperialism was an evil thing. (Orwell, 1950) Orwell implies in the short story, he recognizes humans can be easily influenced and the harm of imperialism of other humans and how humans will act in activities to avoid looking foolish or embarrassed in front of others. Orwell uses the death of the elephant as a metaphor of British imperialism in Burma to symbolize Burma’s struggle under the Britain control. (Orwell, 1950) The

essay is intended for the English people and the Burman community. In the essay, there are specific words only the English would recognize such as “coolie” and “Dravidian.”

“The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson, is a short classic story about a tradition in America, but this story is based on one specific small town where villagers get together on June 27th for the town lottery.

(Jackson, 1949) The lottery began at ten o’clock in the morning and held for less than two hours. There was an old and worn out black wooden box, there was never a thought of making a new one. It is used in symbolism because the tradition has been going on strong for years and no one will go against tradition. (Jackson, 1949) Villagers stuffed their pockets with stones and chucked them at the winner. The oldest guy in the town is used in symbolism because in the story, he mentions how “there has always been a lottery,” and tells the villagers that being chosen is used to be an honor and sacrificed. (Jackson,

1949)

In my third short story essay I included into my essay is called “To Build a Fire” written by Jack London and published in 1908. It is an adventurous story about an unnamed man attempting to travel ten miles is Yukon, Alaska in the snowy wilderness with his only companion, husky wolf dog. It’s about below seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and the man tries to survive, but forces of nature are too strong for him and he dies. The short story reveals a simile when mentioning, “Once, coming around a bend, he shined abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail." The snow and cold represents the antagonist. “To Build a Fire” doesn’t contain many metaphors because the story is detailed realistically and is very directly.

All short stories, movies, magazines or even television do present figurative language including similes, metaphors, symbolism etc. and these three short stories interested me most to share the figurative language I found among readers the stories.