Nov 10, 2009

Shooting an Elephant | Introduction

George Orwell’s ‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’ first appeared in 1936. The British public already knew Orwell as the socially conscious author of Down and Out in London and Paris (1933), a nonfiction study of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and subsistence living on poorly-paying menial jobs, and Burmese Days (1934), a novel of British colonialism. ‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’ functions as an addendum to Burmese Days. The story and novel share the same setting, and draw on Orwell’s experience as a colonial official in India and Burma, two regions of the British Empire, in the middle of the century between the two world wars. The story (which some critics consider an essay) concerns a colonial officer’s obligation to shoot a rogue elephant. The narrator does not want to shoot the elephant, but feels compelled to by a crowd of indigenous residents, before whom he does not wish to appear indecisive or cowardly. The situation and events that Orwell describes underscores the hostility between the administrators of the British Empire and their ‘‘native’’ subjects. Both sides feel hatred, distrust, and resentment. The situation is universally degrading. The shooting itself involves enormous pathos conveyed economically in a few words.

‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’ is a central text in modern British literature and has generated perhaps more criticism than any other comparable short piece. In the politicized atmosphere of contemporary criticism, commentators are especially drawn into debate about whether Orwell apologizes for or condemns imperialism. Left-wing critics see insuf- ficient condemnation; conservative critics point out that it is the narrator, an agent of empire, who explicitly denounces the British presence as pervasively corrupting to both sides. The story is one of the most widely anthologized and studied items of the modern English-language canon.

Shooting an Elephant Summary

‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’ begins with a meditative prelude to the action in which the narrator, who may be presumed to be Orwell, comments on being a colonial policeman in British Burma in the middle of the twentieth century. ‘‘I was hated by large numbers of people,’’he says, and ‘‘anti-European feeling was very bitter.’’ A European woman crossing the market would likely be spat upon and a subdivisional police officer made an even more inviting target. Once, at a soccer match, a Burmese player deliberately fouled the narrator while the Burmese umpire conveniently looked the other direction and the largely Burmese crowd ‘‘yelled with hideous laughter.’’ The narrator understands such hatred and even thinks it justified, but he also confesses that his ‘‘greatest joy’’ at the time would have been to bayonet one of his tormenters.

The action of ‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’ begins when the narrator receives a telephone report of an elephant ‘‘ravaging the bazaar.’’ He takes his inadequate hunting rifle and rides on horseback to the area where the animal allegedly lurks. The narrator remarks on the squalor and poverty of the neighborhood, with its palm-leaf thatch on the huts and unplanned scattering of houses over a hillside. The narrator asks... » Complete Shooting an Elephant Summary