the narrator says,

I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts.

The effect of these images is to convey the complexity and contradiction of the situation in imperial Burma in the 1920s. Imagery hits us emotionally, and we feel for the emotional predicament that the narrator is in and that the Burmese are in. He states that he loathes imperialism and feels guilty over how the Burmese are treated by the British. However, we also feel his resentment at being constantly hated, mocked, and jeered at by the Burmese. He conveys graphically how he pities them and yet wants to kill them at the same time.

We most likely feel shocked at the intensity of the narrator's build-up of negative feelings towards the Burmese and the racial difference he perceives, visualized in describing them as having "sneering yellow faces." (This is less intense with the prisoners, whom he sees as "grey." He also doesn't describe himself; his whiteness is assumed.) His contradictory emotions upset our simplistic ideas that feelings towards the oppressed are uniformly kind and benevolent. Systemic injustice causes anger and hatred that flows both way.

An analogy is a comparison between two things that are not the same but resemble one another in some way. For example, a butterfly's wing is literally analogous to a bird's wing because it allows the butterfly to fly. However, it is also different from a bird's wing because, for example, it is not made of feathers. A metaphor differs from an analogy in that a metaphor is a more imaginative and fanciful comparison, far less literal than an analogy.

Three analogies in the essay are as follows. First, the narrator likens the Burmese, although he feels sympathy for their plight, to "evil-spirited little beasts." They were physically smaller than him due to poor diet, and he has already shown them to be evil-spirited towards their overlords. They are not beasts, but comparing them to beasts emphasizes the disdain the speaker feels for them that mixes with his horror at how they are treated.

Second, the man killed by the elephant while it is on its rampage is analogous to Christ, as becomes evident by the way the narrator describes him:

He was lying... with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. ... with an expression of unendurable agony.

Third, the speaker, as the essay opens, describes the British Raj (rule) as analogous, by implication, to the Roman empire and also to God's eternal kingdom when he likens it to

something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum [forever and ever]

on the Burmese people.

It is clamped down hard, and the use of the Latin term in saecula saeculorum (which is also a Biblical term from the Lord's Prayer) emphasizes the comparison between the British empire and an eternal and all powerful state. By the end of the essay, however, the speaker has realized the empire is absurd and more analogous to the elephant: large and difficult to bring down, but doomed.

In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” there is a powerful analogy that runs throughout the essay. Specifically, the elephant is an analogy for British imperialism in the East. This analogy suggests that imperialism is untamed, unpredictable, and out of control, especially when provoked.

A second analogy takes place when Orwell compares the situation to a performance. First, he likens himself to a magician:

They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick.

He continues this analogy by describing his rifle as “magical.” He then compares himself instead to “an absurd puppet.”

Another analogy in the essay draws attention to the nature of the spectacle. As Orwell gets ready to shoot the elephant, the crowd around him becomes a captivated audience. Orwell points out the sense of drama in the situation by comparing it to a theater setting.

The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats.

Similarly, Orwell says that the imperialist “wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” This suggests that, despite his oppressive role, the imperialist is pressured to respond to the demands of the local people.

First, Orwell made the analogy between skinning a rabbit and the effect that the elephant had on the dead Dravidian coolie.  By doing this, Orwell shows how dehumanized he felt at the time -- he was unaffected enough by the man's death to compare him to an animal.

Second, he makes the analogy between the elephant and a piece of machinery.  This helps us feel like the elephant is useful and ought not to be killed.

Finally, he draws the analogy between himself and a magician that the crowd has gathered to watch.  This shows us that he feels that he is on display and that everyone will watch and judge his actions.

1.  "As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so."  Analogy: A police officer is a target; a police officer is a symbol of imperialism; the natives bait him; the natives are victims of imperialism.

2.  "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."  Analogy: the white soccer player is a tripped by a native; the native referee looks the other way; the native crowd yells and laughs.  Orwell the white soccer player is a symbol of imperialism the same way Orwell the police officer is.  He is baited and targeted by the natives for public ridicule.

3.  "Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours' journey."  Analogy: The elephant'ss mahout is a foreign master, much smaller than the captive elephant just as the British are the foreign imperialists of the Burmans, much smaller in number, but able to maintain control.

The opening paragraph of "Shooting an Elephant" establishes the charged atmosphere in which Orwell exists as an Imperial Police officer in Burma. He relates several episodes that establish in the reader's mind the hatred and resentment that the local people feel towards Europeans. For example, a European woman has betel juice thrown on her dress while she is walking through the local market, and Orwell is tripped by a local man in a soccer game while the referee ignores the other man's infraction and the crowd roars with laughter. It is clear that Orwell feels a sense of resentment and derision from the local people, so when an elephant is discovered marauding in the local bazaar, Orwell feels at once the ridiculousness of his position as a British police office in a nation that resents the colonialists and, somewhat against his will, his responsibility to act as a colonialist master and kill the elephant. 

Most of the imagery occurs when he shoots the elephant for the first time, and then as the elephant slowly dies. 

"a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. 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 paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old."

Then after he fired his last two shots into the elephant, he describes the blood and the agony of the elephant.  Orwell does this so the reader can see the pain of both the elephant and the regret of his own as he fell into the "peer pressure" that the Burmese had over him.

"The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further."

In "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell uses vivid details to help readers visualize the shooting and mentally prepare for the climactic action of the event. As the rising action flows forward, readers are engrossed in the narrator's reflections on imperialism and the mob mentality of the Burmese people following him. An intense energy fills this rising action as they reach the elephant. Just before setting up for the shot, however, Orwell uses vivid details to set the event apart from that rising action. The narrator describes the setting, even noting that "the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step." This goes back to the old adage of "show, don't tell." Orwell doesn't write that the ground is muddy, but what type of mud and how one interacts with it. In the following line, the narrator says that against an angry elephant at close range, "I would have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller." That image vividly illustrates a picture in the readers' minds to bring them into the scene. 

When the narrator lies down and takes aim, he describes the crowd. This very energetic mob "grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh [. . .] breathed from innumerable throats." Here the crowd is outwardly slowing. The details in their demeanor of expectation bring the readers into similar mindsets. The readers, too, can become still and take those deep breaths before the climactic moment of the shooting.