Topic > Shooting an Elephant - 1354

In the essay Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell discusses his experiences as a British police officer in Lower Burma and reflects on the nature of imperialism. Since “anti-European feeling was very bitter” due to the dictatorship of the British Empire in Burma, Orwell is treated disrespectfully by the Burmese (12). This allows him to hate his job and the British Empire. However, the incident of killing an elephant gives him a “better insight… into the real nature of imperialism – the real reasons why despotic government acts” (13). Through his life experiences as a British man, Orwell effectively demonstrates the negative effects of imperialism on individuals and society. With the use of effective diction in his essay, Orwell conveys his emotions and message to his readers excellently. He often uses the word “natives” for the Burmese: “Here I am, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd” (15). By doing so, he demonstrates his emotions and respect towards the Burmese because calling them “natives” suggests that he agrees that they are the true owners of Burma and not the British Empire. Furthermore, by frequently using the word “natives,” Orwell reminds his readers of the existence of imperialism in Burma so that readers do not simply grasp the elephant but also understand the message embedded in the essay. The elephant's body is compared to machinery as Orwell thinks that killing an elephant “is comparable to the destruction of a huge and expensive piece of machinery” (15). This comparison makes readers understand that the British Empire is also like a huge machine, so its death would be a serious matter for both the oppressor and the oppressed people. When Orwell was......center of paper......Shooting an elephant. According to what Orwell is trying to impose, his target audience seems to be young people, adults and politicians as imperialism reflects more on people of these categories. As a police officer, Orwell teaches his readers that imperialism is the worst way to rule a country as it is harmful to an individual's way of thinking and the value of morality in society. It showed that in a system based on imperialism, no one is actually dominant over each other as they all end up being slaves to each other. This results in a demolished and demoralized society. Orwell achieves his goal exceptionally by playing with rhetorical devices, tone, diction and sentence structure to generate feeling in the audience in the desired way. As a result, Orwell brilliantly uses the episode of killing an elephant to describe the negative effects of imperialism.