In Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, what problem is he asked to solve?

In Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell recounts an event that occurred while he was a sub-divisional police officer in a town in Burma. Specifically, Orwell tells the reader of his role in first investigating the report of a loose elephant, then shooting the elephant. What is not clear from the narrative is what is expected of Orwell by his superiors, and whether the loose elephant is the only problem he needs to solve.

When introducing the reader to the incident, Orwell writes:

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. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out.

From this, the reader may conclude that Orwell is asked to solve the problem of the loose elephant, which Orwell quickly learns has done considerable damage to the bazaar and killed livestock. However, he is not given specific orders to do anything in particular about the elephant. He is asked to do something about the situation.

The situation in which Orwell finds himself is not merely one in which a dangerous animal is on the loose; the people of the town grow to expect Orwell, as the representative of the government present on the scene, to act, especially after they find that the elephant has killed a person. It is this pressure to act as well as the fear of appearing foolish that lead Orwell to shoot the elephant, even though it appears to present no imminent danger when he finally finds it.

On the surface, the problem is the loose elephant. However, the larger problem may be managing the people of the town and their expectations of how Orwell and, by extension, the government will act. In doing something about the elephant, Orwell is able to take care of the entire situation, which might have included some unrest by the townspeople had Orwell not acted as he did.

In "Shooting an Elephant," what crisis was George Orwell called to solve?

George Orwell's essay about his experiences as a colonial police officer in British-occupied Burma, Shooting an Elephant, is the author's bitter indictment of the dehumanizing effects on occupied and occupier alike of European imperialism. The answer to the question -- what crisis was Orwell called to solve -- is implied in the story's title. In his capacity as a sub-divisional police officer in the southern Burmese town of Moulmein, Orwell is called upon to deal with an unusual problem, described by the author early in his essay:

"Early one morning the subinspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it?"

Orwell, then, is compelled to deal with a rampaging elephant that has destroyed property and, as the investigating officer discovers, killed a villager, a scene described in excruciating detail:

"He [the villager] was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. 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.) The friction of the great beast's foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit."

While the elephant was largely domesticated, it had gone rogue and, in the eyes of the indigenous population, had to be put down -- an expectation that ran counter to Orwell's instincts and that presented him with a moral quandary that came to symbolize the futility and barbarity inherent in colonialism. By the time Orwell, now armed with a powerful rifle, encounters the elephant, its anger or fear had dissipated and it no longer presented a threat to the town. The villagers, however, are anxious to see how Orwell, the representative of the occupying power, deals with the situation, and this hapless police officer feels compelled to shoot the now-harmless animal rather than appear weak in the eyes of those he is supposed to rule in the name of the British Empire he serves.

What is the village's problem and its solution in "Shooting an Elephant"?

In Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant," an elephant in "must" escapes from its owner and terrorizes the streets of the town in Lower Burma. When the narrator receives the news that an elephant is ravaging the bazaar, he takes his small rifle to check out the situation. The narrator learns that the elephant has already destroyed a bamboo hut, killed a cow, raided a fruit stall, and flipped a municipal garbage van. The narrator then turns the corner and discovers that the elephant has also trampled and killed a man, who is smashed into the ground with his eyes open. The narrator then requests an elephant rifle in order to protect himself, and a crowd begins to gather. The narrator mentions that the crowd of Burmese civilians makes him nervous and expects him to shoot the elephant when he finds it.

When the narrator finally spots the elephant, it is calmly eating grass by itself. Despite the narrator's personal feelings about shooting the tranquil beast, he feels the need to demonstrate his authority in front of the Burmese citizens and shoots the elephant against his will. Eventually, the elephant dies a long, painful death as the narrator continues to shoot it multiple times before it finally dies.