Dec 26, 2009

Shooting an Elephant | Style

Point of View
In ‘‘Shooting an Elephant,’’ Orwell employs a casually assumed first-person point of view; what readers know of the event described in the story, they know primarily from the narrator’s direct and apparently candid divulgence. Couching the tale in the first person enables Orwell to engage in the rhythm of meditation and action without it seeming forced; because the narrator is reminiscing about the event, which occurred some time in the past, his interweaving of essayistic reflections with the main action strikes the reader as quite natural. The use...