Search results
1936. " Shooting an Elephant " is an essay by British writer George Orwell, first published in the literary magazine New Writing in late 1936 and broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 12 October 1948. The essay describes the experience of the English narrator, possibly Orwell himself, called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant while working as ...
- George Orwell
- United Kingdom
- 1936
- Unknown whether fiction or non-fiction
The elephant lies on the ground, breathing laboriously. Orwell waits for it to die, but it continues to breathe. He fires at its heart, but the elephant hardly seems to notice the bullets. Orwell is distressed to see the elephant laboring to die, clearly in agonizing pain, so he fires his smaller-caliber rifle into its body countless times.
Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided.
Mar 29, 2021 · By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Shooting an Elephant’ is a 1936 essay by George Orwell (1903-50), about his time as a young policeman in Burma, which was then part of the British empire. The essay explores an apparent paradox about the behaviour of Europeans, who supposedly have the power over their colonial subjects.
Shooting an Elephant Summary. George Orwell works as the sub-divisional police officer of a town in the British colony of Burma. Because he is a military occupier, he is hated by much of the village. Though the Burmese never stage a full revolt, they express their disgust by taunting Orwell at every opportunity.
In “Shooting an Elephant,” George Orwell draws on his own experiences of shooting an elephant in Burma. This elephant has been terrorizing a bazaar, but the narrator has serious misgivings ...
The British Empire is undeniably the dominant historical backdrop for “Shooting an Elephant.”. The empire expanded rapidly in the 19th century, and its territories spanned as far as New Zealand and India. Burma—now Myanmar—was where Orwell was stationed, and was acquired by the British in 1886. In 1948, a relatively short time after ...
