His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.
I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant. The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me.
They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant — I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary — and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you.
I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us.
He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth. I had halted on the road.
As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is 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. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow.
Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home. But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side.
I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.
Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.
I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.
He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. 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. But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to.
Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.
It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back.
Many of his essays are written as third person commentaries or reviews, such as his "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels.
In these works Orwell uses the first person perspective as a rhetorical strategy for supporting his argument. For example, he opens his essay "Politics and the English Language" with the following lines:. In the paragraph which follows the above excerpt Orwell switches from the first person plural to the first person singular.
By the second paragraph, however, he has already included his audience in his argument: we cannot do anything; our civilization is decadent. If we disagree with these sentiments, then we are ready to follow Orwell's argument over the following ten pages.
While he does not use the inclusive "we" in "Shooting an Elephant," Orwell's use of the first person perspective is a rhetorical strategy. Discuss with students Orwell's decision to utilize the first person perspective rather than the third person perspective. You might ask question such as:. Ask students to write a short essay about one of the following two topics. Students should be sure to support their answers with examples from the text.
Skip to main content. Lesson Plan. Photo caption. Library of Congress. What is Orwell's argument or message, and what persuasive tools does he use to make it? Analyze Orwell's essay within its appropriate cultural and historical context. Lesson Plan Details Background. Review George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant.
Familiarize yourself with the historical context of Orwell's story, as well as the biographical circumstances that placed him in Burma as a police officer. Review metaphor , imagery , irony , symbolism and connotative and denotative language. Activity 1. However, at various points in the plot he is compelled to come to the rescue of certain of his fellow colonists, such that by the end of Burmese Days we might think of Flory as an honorary policeman, or at least guardian of the civilian population.
So, for example, early in the novel he leaps into action after hearing a fearful cry and a commotion created by a water buffalo. He competently frightens the animal away, winning over the lovely Elizabeth girl who recently came from the cultured city of Paris. Before long Flory is madly in love but various obstacles to a match are placed in his way. The narrator lets us look behind the successful outward poses of officers and merchants to see their narrow-mindedness and frequent recourse to alcohol to get them through difficult and unrewarding careers.
The scenes describing the British colony and the ill-mannered members of the Club that Flory has little choice but to attend are advanced with a bracing cynicism. There is of course a strong colour bar and arrogant club members think little of assaulting and demeaning servants who fail to please their masters.
Both laws that discriminate against the local population and oppressive treatment at the hands of the colonial masters who at times act with impunity lead at one point in the novel to a full-scale riot.
Ellis, a bigoted racist, has lost his cool and lashed out with his walking stick at a schoolboy who has acted mischievously and greatly annoyed him. Due to incompetent medical treatment the boy is blinded. As the law will clearly not operate to hold Ellis accountable for his actions, a mob of incensed Burmese begin an all-out assault on the Club.
Flory performs a truly heroic deed in breaking out to courageously cross the river to the point where the police force is stationed and alerting them to the danger.
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