Shooting An Elephant Imperialism

In “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, Orwell comes across struggles with his conscience. Imperialism was a thought going through his head and was brought up throughout the story. The Burmese hated the Europeans and Orwell explains what they do to the targeted. Orwell also talks about why the Burmese should be mad at the Europeans. Another struggle he has was the shooting of the elephant and the events leading up to it. Although he had a hard time, Orwell manages to accept what he did and thinks he did what was necessary.
The Burmese are obviously upset with the Europeans. He talks about it in the story in various ways; one scene would be when he talks about the European woman going through the bazaars. “But if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress.” (Line 4). Although Orwell is a sub-divisional police officer of the town, he was still seen as a target, he “was hated by large numbers of people.” (line 1). This shows how no matter what or who you are, the Burmese are not pleased.

According to Orwell, he doesn’t like his job at all what so ever.

Orwell describes it as “perplexing and upsetting.” (Line 13). Orwell says it himself, “in a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.” (line 17). In fact, the Burmese has many reasons to be mad at the Europeans. When Orwell describes the prisoners, “wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, crowd faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos.” (Line 17). He felt “an intolerable sense of guilt.” (line 20). As a result, Orwell does feel bad for the Burmese; He saw “imperialism was an evil thing.” (Line

14).
On the other hand, Orwell had some more conscience struggles to deal with. The elephant was on the loose when Orwell was asked to go find it and take care of the situation. “With a rifle and five cartridges,” (line 73), Orwell approaches the elephant. “As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me.” (line 75). Orwell feels pressure when the some Burmans followed him as he approaches the elephant. He didn’t know whether to shoot the elephant or not. He knew “it [was] a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided.” (Line 90). However, Orwell did realize that with rifle in hand, he must shoot the elephant. He didn’t want “to come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.” (line 115). This resulted with Orwell shooting the elephant. Consequently, people did judge him for what he did, “there was endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant.” (line 181).
As you can see Orwell did have many struggles with his conscience, not only when debating about shooting the elephant or not but, about imperialism and the people of Burma.