What does the elephant symbolize in "Shooting an Elephant"?

I'd add one thing to the answers above, both true: the elephant also symbolizes his shame. As a colonist, he occupies a place that he has no right to occupy. He is neither superior nor especially fit to govern. The elephant is like the Burmese people. Large, natural, and apparently needing to be controlled. The entire horrendous situation could have been avoided, and yet the narrative persona mindlessly follows the expectations of others, even though he is hopelessly incompetent. He knows there is no need to act--the elephant is already beginning to calm down when he shoots it. But he doesn't feel as if he can get out of the situation. He has power, but, as Jamie says, not conscience. So he kills an innocent in order to avoid looking like a fool. In killing the elephant, however, he reveals himself a fool. He is the worst kind of authority--someone who acts because they feel compelled to act, not because of an inner conviction, or a commitment to right action.

What does the elephant symbolize in "Shooting an Elephant"?

In "Shooting an Elephant", the Elephant represents the working man since in India and Burma, the elephant is a work animal. It can also be seen to represent the role of the Burmanese to the colonial power - in this analogy; the Burmanese would be the colonial power over the elephant. At the end of the story, the animal takes on definite human characteristics as it dies.

What does the elephant symbolize in "Shooting an Elephant"?

The elephant represents the narrator's conscience, which he tries to ignore (it is the proverbial "elephant in the room.")

Here is an excerpt on the theme and symbolism of the elephant from eNotes. You can learn more about this and other elements of Orwell's gripping tale by visiting the link below.

"His official position, rather than his moral disposition, compels the narrator to act in the way that he does, so as to uphold his office precisely by keeping the native Burmese in their subordinate and dependent place. As a colonial official, the narrator must not let himself become a spectacle before the native crowds. Not shooting the elephant would make him seem like a coward, so he shoots the elephant. The narrator’s moral conscience appears in the moment when the corpse of the Burmese crushed by the elephant comes to his attention; the narrator says that the man lay sprawled in a ‘‘crucified’’ posture, invoking all of the poignant and rich symbolism that the term ‘‘crucified’’ offers. The elephant, too, especially in its pain-wracked death, evokes in the narrator feelings of terrible pity, not soothed by his knowledge that he acted within the law. Law, indeed, opposes conscience in ‘‘Shooting an Elephant.’’ The brute fact of Empire, thoroughly institutionalized, is irreconcilable with the individual’s moral analysis of the situation."

What does the elephant symbolize in "Shooting an Elephant"?

We are never completely certain of the extent to which the story "Shooting an Elephant" is autobiographical. Orwell was actually an imperial policeman in Burma, and he uses the first person and an autobiographical tone throughout. So the narrator, in some sense, at least, is Orwell himself. Beyond that, the narrator represents the corrupting effects of British imperialism on the colonizers themselves, as well as the colonized. The narrator is placed in a situation where he is forced, as he sees it, by his relationship with the Burmese people to shoot the elephant, which he does not want to do. But they expect him to, and he does it to avoid, in his words, "looking a fool." He feels insecure and hated (he discusses this at length in the beginning of the story) and the only way he can avoid looking foolish is by living up to their expectations of him. Imperialism is, at the end of the day, a violent enterprise, and the narrator, insecure in his power in the face of a mob, must satisfy them by behaving violently and against his wishes. 

What does the slow death of the elephant in "Shooting an Elephant" symbolize?

One could interpret the elephant's slow, agonizing death in several ways. The elephant could represent the oppressed Burmese citizens, who are disenfranchised under British rule. The narrator's three shots could represent the three Anglo-Burmese Wars. The fact that the elephant does not immediately die but remains paralyzed after being shot could symbolically represent the oppressed nature of the native Burmese citizens. The agony and prolonged death expressed by the elephant correlates and represents the suffering that the Burmese citizens endure under the British colonial regime. The elephant's agonizing death could also symbolically represent the narrator's tortured conscience. As a British police officer who sympathizes with the disenfranchised Burmese citizens, the narrator has conflicting feelings. Therefore, the elephant's agonizing death could symbolically represent the narrator's tortured soul as a member of a terrorizing, oppressive colonial regime. Either way, the elephant's slow, agonizing death symbolically represents the destructive, debilitating nature of colonialism.

What does the slow death of the elephant in "Shooting an Elephant" symbolize?

I think that the slow and agonizing death of the elephant helps to bring out many of Orwell's themes in the narrative.  The fact that there is a sadly human element to the elephant's death is revealed through the slow and almost deliberate nature in which it died.  For example, Orwell's description of a "great mound of a side painfully rising and falling" seeks to humanize an animal that had been seen in such a negative light throughout the piece.  At the same time, there is futility revealed the slow death of the animal.  This is in the idea that the "great beast lay there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die."  This is a powerful vision.  It is one in which Orwell is making it clear that there is a futility associated with imperialism, control, and the basic premise that there is a distinct right and wrong in the conditions of one nation imposing its will on another.  The savage reactions of the Burmese to the death has constructed them to be almost as bad as the British in terms of their reaction to the death of this animal.  The slow death of the elephant helps to bring out the futility and pain that lies at the heart of British Imperialism and its impact on both the colonizer and the colonized.  There is only the constant of suffering, agonizing pain, and slow death.  Little else remains.

What does the elephant symbolize in George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant"?

The elephant in the short story can symbolize the British Empire in several ways. Initially, the narrator receives word that the elephant has been terrorizing the village and destroying everything in its path. The destructive nature of the elephant can represent the British Empire's oppressive force through its imperialist conquests. Colonies like Burma suffer under the oppressive British rule, where the native citizens are marginalized and discriminated against. At the beginning of the story, the narrator mentions that he has witnessed the "dirty work of Empire" firsthand and is sickened at its treatment of the native people. Similar to British rule, the elephant proceeds to raid fruit stalls, destroy vehicles, and crush defenseless people in the streets.

The elephant's agonizing slow death can also symbolize the demise of the British Empire, which drastically loses its power and influence leading up to and following WWII. The police officer even mentions that he had no idea that the British Empire was dying while he was stationed in Burma. Overall, the elephant's destructive nature and slow death symbolically represent the oppressive colonial British regime and its subsequent demise following WWII.

What is the main idea of "Shooting An Elephant" by George Orwell?

In the classic essay "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell, an unnamed narrator, presumably Orwell himself, is a police officer in colonial Burma. The main idea of the essay is to express the author's opposition to imperialism. He says this outright early in the essay:

For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically—and secretly, of course—I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British.

The narrator expresses his distaste for the British occupation of Burma by describing how helpless and guilt-ridden he feels as he attempts to carry out his duties. He is forced to obey his superiors and fulfill the duties of his post, and at the same time he is compelled to perform as a white man is expected to by the Burmese people.

Orwell uses the incident with the elephant as a metaphor for "the real nature of imperialism." The narrator tracks the elephant and finally finds him eating grass in a muddy paddy. He realizes that the right thing, since the elephant has calmed down, is to do nothing and wait until the handler arrives. However, the elephant has killed a man, and all around him is a crowd of Burmese that expects him to do something. He feels powerless to follow his conscience, knowing that he is expected to act out the role that his status demands. In the end, therefore, he shoots the elephant, but it dies in agony. If he had been able to follow the dictates of his conscience, the ugly scene could have been avoided. In the larger picture, in subjugating the Burmese, the British had compromised their own ability to behave morally.

What is the significance of the elephant in "Shooting an Elephant"?

The elephant of George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" carries with it significance for both the Burmese and the British as its death symbolizes the pervasive corruption of imperialism on both sides. For, imperialism corrupts the soul of both the conqueror and the conquered; in both there is a terrible sense of resentment, according to critic Thomas Bertonneau. On the one hand, the imperialist knows that he is being watched, and he must not subject himself to ridicule. It is, as Orwell writes,

...the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him....Every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

On the other hand, the "natives" are rapacious, and want the flesh of the working elephant, even though they are aware of its worth as a comparative piece of machinery. For, they wish to have a symbolic victim of their own, it seems,

Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds, dead, he would be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possible.

Thus, the anger that the crowd feels towards the narrator as an agent of empire gets deflected to the elephant; like the English, Orwell's team illustrates the futility of the white men's dominion in the East when the shooting of the elephant is done simply so that Orwell woud "avoid looking a fool." The shooting of the elephant is thus congruent with the senseless death of the elephant's victim, and it has solved nothing.

An act of resentment, the shooting of the elephant illustrates the injustice of colonial rule, a rule that corrupts both the imperialists and those colonized because violence is imposed upon both sides. The Burmese cruelty is imposed upon Orwell in retaliation for the British oppression--

The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lockups, the gray, cowed face of the long-term convicts....

This oppression of the Burmese in laughing at him, "clicking their tongues," leaves Orwell with a sense of guilt; however, because he feels guilt, he retaliates in his resentment, too, feeling he must not make a fool of himself and come out with his rifle after the elephant and do nothing. But, like the dying elephant, the British empire will also slowly die. 

Why does Orwell emphasize the elephant's misery in paragraphs 11 and 12 of "Shooting an Elephant"?

Towards the end of the short story, Orwell describes the moment that the British officer shoots the elephant in fascinating detail with extraordinary pathos. Orwell captures the brutal agony that the elephant suffers after being shot multiple times by the officer to represent the plight of the subjugated Burmese people. The elephant can symbolize the oppressed Burmese population, which is attempting to gain liberty from its British rulers. The three shots symbolically represent the three Anglo-Burmese Wars. The first war began in 1824, the second in 1852, and the third war, which resulted in the complete subjugation of the Burmese, took place in 1885. With each shot, the elephant gradually weakens but does not die. The shots, which represent the British invading forces, dramatically incapacitate the elephant but do not kill the beast. Similarly, the wars do not utterly destroy the Burmese population but significantly harm them as they suffer under their oppressive colonizers. The agony expressed during the elephant's death also illustrates the brutal, destructive nature of imperial conquest. Orwell shared the officer's negative feelings towards imperialism and the ugly, agonizing death of the majestic creature symbolizes the effects of exploiting weaker countries.

Why does Orwell emphasize the elephant's misery in paragraphs 11 and 12 of "Shooting an Elephant"?

In "Shooting an Elephant," Orwell devotes lots of time to describing the elephant's misery for two reasons. Firstly, because he wants the reader to experience this event from his perspective. He does this by depicting the elephant as an elderly and vulnerable creature:

"An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old."

By doing this, Orwell suggests that the elephant is a misunderstood creature which poses no real security threat. Shooting the elephant is, therefore, a political act which he was loathe to carry out.

Secondly, Orwell uses heavy description as a means of reinforcing his point that imperialism is evil and exploitative. He suggests, therefore, that imperialism targets the weak (an ageing elephant) and makes other people behave in a manner which goes against their nature. In this case, Orwell is forced to shoot the elephant to maintain his authority among the native population, even though he has no real desire to do so.  

What is Orwell's inner conflict in "Shooting an Elephant" and how does he resolve it?

Orwell's narrator's inner conflict in "Killing an Elephant" is whether to be true to himself and lose face by walking away from killing an elephant or doing the socially acceptable thing, which is to kill the animal. He does what is expected and kills the animal, though there is no real need to do so.

Like almost everyone who has ever lived, the narrator has experienced a moment of going against everything he believes in because it is the easy way out of a messy situation. He believes that if he does not kill the elephant, he will lose what little respect he has in the eyes of the Burmese, who already spend their time jeering at and trying to humiliate him, because he is a representative of the hated British empire. Rather than put up with that and allow the empire to look weak, he does what he loathes in killing an innocent animal.

This is his "denying Christ" moment in which he does not live up to his better self. He does not do the right thing. He loses the battle with his own integrity. This resembles the moment in Orwell's 1984 when Winston betrays Julia to save himself.

Orwell tells this story to show how corrupt systems of power can turn good-hearted people into the doers of evil. He doesn't expect individuals to stand up heroically at all times to evil systems and do the right thing: that is, practically speaking, impossible. Instead, he implies that systems themselves ought to be changed to make it easier for people to be good.

Describe the death scene of the elephant in "Shooting an Elephant."

For such a dignified animal, symbolic of strength and wisdom, the elephant dies an ignominious death.

In order to effectively shoot an elephant, one should aim at the side of the head, straight at the ear hole so that the bullet will pass through the brain. But, Orwell does not know this, and thinking that the brain is further forward on the great beast's head, he aims lower. Because his bullet strikes lower, the elephant does not die immediately; instead, he seems to have felt some seismic shock within himself as the lines of his body appear to have altered. Suddenly he looks older; he shrinks, he is stricken and crumbling before Orwell's eyes. Then, as though the weight of life were too much to bear, the elephant sags to his knees with his mouth slobbering in the throes of death.

Yet, with the second shot, the elephant rises in defiance to this blast of deadly force. However, a third shot rings out, rattling with agony through his body, knocking out the last strength in his legs. As his hindquarters sink to the ground, the great elephant seems for a moment to grow larger because his front appears to rise as his hindquarters collapse. Then, for the first time, he trumpets, screaming against the gods as he falls mightily, shaking the earth around him.

like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came,...

Still, he is not dead. He lies on his side, breathing surprisingly rhythmically with great raspings from within the chambers of his powerful lungs. Laboriously, his side rises and falls in his agony. Wishing to put an end to the great beast's death throes, Orwell fires into what he perceives as the heart of the elephant. Somehow, this ancient animal of such power continues to lie in agony, still breathing in some other world where bullets seem to make no impression. Orwell must walk away when the tortured gasps last steadily for hours before the mighty elephant finally dies.

What actions does the elephant take in the story "Shooting an Elephant?"

The mute, giant elephant stands at the centre of the main action in this memorable autobiographical sketch by George Orwell. It is the elephant that sets the whole drama in motion. It’s not a wild elephant but a tame one who is under “the attack of ‘must’” and so it’s “ravaging the bazaar.”

The narrator is posted as sub-divisional police officer in the village when the elephant starts wreaking havoc in the village. When he sees the badly mutilated body of a villager, he orders an elephant rifle. He does so only for self protection.

The moment when the narrator encounters the elephant, it’s grazing harmlessly in a field. The attack of ‘must’ has passed off. Now it is “no more dangerous than a cow.” The narrator sees no point in shooting it anymore. Still he shoots it dead.

The narrator does so against his will. Actually, he succumbs to an inexorable force that the expectations of thousands of Burmese exercise upon him. He is a 'sahib' and he can’t back off. He has been following the elephant and now when it stands only few meters away, he is expected to shoot it.

At the very outset, the narrator makes it clear that what he’s going to share is an “enlightening” though “tiny incident in itself.”

“One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism--the real motives for which despotic governments act.”

After reading the sketch, one realizes that this discovery by the narrator has been possible only because of the elephant. It’s a pity that that it’s killed merely to keep up appearances. However, by dying a pitiable death, that was avoidable, the elephant “enlightens” the narrator about “the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East.”

Describe the elephant's escape and death in George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant".

In "Shooting an elephant", the master essayist of the twentieth century, George Orwell, maintains that a minor incident of shooting an elephant in colonial Burma symbolizes the evil and futility of British imperial rule. This truth comes clear to him one morning near the beginning of the rainy season when the narrator, a colonial police officer, learns that a domesticated elephant, maddened by estrus, has broken free of its mahout or master and is terrorizing the neighborhood. At the time the incident is reported to the policeman, the elephant has destroyed a hut, upended a garbage van, killed a cow, and satisfied its hunger in the fruit stalls of the local bazaar. Without weapons to protect themselves - a direct result of the disarmament policy of the British administration - the Burmese are powerless to prevent the elephant from roaming at will. The narrator arrives at the site of the last report of the rampaging elephant to find a commotion around a hut. There he finds the body of a Dravidian coolie, his body horribly mangled by the elephant. Armed with a true elephant gun, the narrator approaches the elephant now grazing peacefully in a nearby paddy field. Pressured by the unspoken expectation of a vast crowd of native onlookers, he fires his powerful weapon at what he surmised was the elephant's brain. Although he fires a total of three rounds into the beast, the offiicer is shocked to see that it still lives. That condition of a slow, agonizing death persists even after the officer exhausts all his ammunition. At last he leaves in disgust, later learning that it takes a half hour for the animal to die.

What is the metaphorical significance of the elephant's death in "Shooting an Elephant"?

There are a couple of ways to read and understand the elephant death scene in "Shooting an Elephant." From a psychological point of view, the narrator definitely feels that killing the elephant is a test of his authority and manhood. As a British officer, his place is to command respect from the natives and uphold the principles of the British Empire, and the natives clearly expect him to do so. The narrator's disgust at the job and his sense of inferiority in the role that has been thrust upon him are no match for these expectations. The brutal shooting of the elephant is a kind of psychic suicide. While the elephant is actually killed, the narrator's personal agency is also murdered.

From a political point of view, the scene can be read as a comment on the nature of colonialism. It's clear that the narrator has no business being in charge of anything in the village; the suggestion is that England itself has no business being in charge of Burma. The English—and the capitalism that they bring with them—turn everything into money and privilege. The elephant is worth a lot of money, so killing it will be a financial hardship for the owner, yet not killing it means that the narrator would have to ignore the expectations of the Burmese villagers, who are closely watching him and insist upon the elephant being killed, even though it is now harmless. In this regard, the killing is purely an expression of the power dynamics in Burma at the time.

How does the elephant die in "Shooting an Elephant"?

In this story, the elephant dies as a result of being shot by the narrator, with a .44 Winchester rifle.

You'll notice from the text that the elephant does not die after the first shot. In fact, Orwell shoots the elephant twice, and neither of these cartridges does enough damage to kill it. While the elephant is clearly in "agony," it takes a third shot to bring the elephant crashing down to the ground. The force of this fall is so great that it shakes the ground beneath the narrator's feet.

The elephant, however, is still not dead. Once it is down on the ground, Orwell fires his remaining two cartridges, finally ending the animal's life.

You'll also notice that Orwell takes no pleasure in shooting the elephant. He kills it only to avoid being publicly humiliated by the native Burmese.