Shooting An Elephant Summary

The first two paragraphs establishes that in Lower Burma, it’s divided. It’s anti-European in the first paragraph “I was sub-divisional police officer...anti-European feeling was very bitter”. Also in paragraph one “No one had the guts….betel juice over her dress” The people of Burma would see European women and spit at them for simply being European. George being European was
treated extremely unfairly as well. “when a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.”
The narrator was enlightened because the incident gives him a glimpse of “the real motives for which despotic government act”. Orwell gives visuals all throughout the third and fourth paragraph. At the bottom of the third paragraph Orwell states “It had already destroyed someone’s bamboo hut, killed a cow, and raided some fruit stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal van and, when the driver jumped out and took his heels. had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon. The Burmese sub-inspector and some indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen”. You can vision the

elephant stomping on a bamboo hut, killing a cow, raiding fruit-stalls, etc. He goes on to describe the quarter where the elephant once was. He states “It was a very poor quarter…. over a steep hillside”. Lastly he describes the dead body he comes across “I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes”.
When Orwell makes his way to the elephant he’s going through internal conflict. He’s extremely uneasy and uncomfortable with having to shoot an elephant especially with a crowd expecting him to. Orwell states “ It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intentions to defend myself if necessary-- and it’s always unnerving to have a crowd follow you”. When Orwell sees the elephant he doesn’t think it should be shot. The elephants was simply enjoying some grass, finally at peace. Orwell states “Moreover, I did not in the least….savage again and then go home”.
Orwell comes to the conclusion that he has to shoot the elephant. The natives are expecting him to shoot the elephant which made him realize that in this moment he was needed and worth a lot more than he normally was. He believes that he was simply being used as a puppet but he also wasn’t okay with being the laughing stalk of all the natives, he didn’t want to disappoint his people. Orwell states “The people expected it of me and I had got to do it;...forward, irresistibly.”. He also states “Here was I, the white man with his gun...figure of a sahib”. Lastly he claims “To come all the way, rifle in hand… to be laughed at.”
Orwell doesn’t want to hurt the elephant, at all.

He wants to go up the elephant to make sure he behaves and if he does he wanted to wait for the mahout to come back. Even if the elephant becomes agitated Orwell knows he can’t even kill the elephant. Orwell states “But also I knew I was going to do no such thing, I was a poor shot,,,much chance as a toad under a steamroller.” Orwell wasn't going to let anything stop him from getting respect from the natives for his people. “A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of ‘natives’; and so in general, he isn’t frightened”. Orwell states “And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do”. Orwell would rather experience death then get laughed at by over two thousand

natives.

Orwell attempts to kill the elephant several times. The first time Orwell shot the elephant several inches in front of the elephant's ear-hole trying to shoot the animal in the brain. Once the bullet hits the elephant Orwell states. ”He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down”. Orwell goes on to shoot the elephant on more than one occasion, he shoots him so many times that he had to use a second rifle. Orwell only shoots so many time because after every shot the elephant wasn’t dying and he just wanted to put the elephant out of it’s misery. Orwell states “I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat”.