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Shooting An Elephant, by George Orwell. Reading Comprehension
Shooting An Elephant, by George Orwell. Reading Comprehension
150 Unit 5
SHOOTII\TG AI{
ELEIHAI\TT
by George Orwell
Ir, Vto.rlmein, in Lower Burma, I rr-as all. There were several thousands trf
hated by large numbers of people-the them in the town and none of then-r
only time in my life that I have been im- seemed to have anything to do excert
portant enough for this to happen to me. stand on street corners and jeer at Euro-
I was subdivisional police officer of the peans.
town, and in an aimless, pettr- kintl of All this was perplexing and upsetting.
way anti-European feeling \\'as \-err L.it- For at that time I had already made up
ter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, my mind that imperialism was an evil
but if a European woman r,r'ent thrtrtrgh thing and the sooner I chucked up rnv
t};re b azaa rs alone s omeb o c1)' n- o tt kI ''' r L'r - job and got out of it the better. Theoreti-
ably spit betel juice over her dress. -\s a cally-and secretly, of course-I was all
police officer I was an obvious target arrrl for the Burmese and all against their op-
was baited whenever it seemed safe to r1o pressors, the British. As for the job I vvas
so. When a nimble Burman tri-rp-rer1 me doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can
up on the football field and the referee perhaps make clear. In a job like that you
(another Burman) looked the other \\-a\-, see the dirty work of the Empire at close
the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. quarters. The wretched prisoners hud-
This happened more than once. In the dling in the stinking cages of the lock-
end the sneering yellow faces of r-oung Lrps, the grefr cowed faces of the
men that met me everywhere, the insults long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks
hooted after me when I was at a safe dis- of the men who had been flogged rvith
tance, got badly on my ner\es. The bamboos-all these oppressed me n'ith an
young Buddhist priests were the rt'orst of intolerable sense of guilt. But I cotrl.l
betel juice (BEET ul joos) juice produced by chewing the betel nut
imperialism (im PIR ee uhl iz um) the policy and practice of formng and
maintaining an empire by controlling other countries or colonies
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his heels, had turned the van over and EasU a story always sounds clear enough
inflicted violence upon it. at a distance, but the nearer you get to
The Burmese sub-inspector and some the scene of events the vaguer it be-
Indian constables were waiting for me in comes. Some of the people said that the
the quarter r,t'here the elephant had been elephant had gone in one direction, some
seen. It was a very poor quarter, a laby- said that he had gone in another, some
rinth of sqr-raiid bamboo huts, thatched professed not even to have heard of anv
with palm-leaf, u'inding all over a steep elephant. I had almost made up my mind
hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, that the whole story was a pack of lies,
stuffy morning at the beginning of the when we heard yells a little distance
rains. We began qr-restioning the people away. There was a loud, scandalized crr-
as to where the elephant had gone and, of "Go away, child! Go away this in-
as usual, failed to get any definite infor- stant!" and an old woman with a su'itch
mation. That is inr.ariably the case in the in her hand came round the corner of a
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is a serious matter to shoot a working ele- in the East. Here was I, the white man
phant-it is comparable to destroying a with his Brr, standing in front of the
huge and costly piece of machinery-and unarmed native crowd-seemingly the
obviously one ought not to do it if it can leading actor of the piece; but in
possibly be avoided. And at that distance, reality I was only an absurd puppet
peacefully eating, the elephant looked no pushed to and fro by the r,vill of those
more dangerous than a cow. I thought yellow faces behind. I perceived in
then and I think now that his attack of this moment that when the n'hite man
"rrrlJst" was already passing off; in which turns tyrant it is his o\ rn freedom
case he would merely wander harmlesslv that he destroys. He becomes a sort of
about until the mahout came back and hollow, posing dummy, the convention-
caught him. Moreover, I did not in the alized figure of a sahib. For it is the
least want to shoot him. I decided that I condition of his rule that he shall spend
would watch him for a little while to his life in trying to impress the "naIives,"
make sure that he did not turn sa\-age and so in every crisis he has got to
again, and then go home. do what the "natives" expect of him. He
But at that moment I glanced round at wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.
the crowd that had followed me. It n'as I had got to shoot the elephant. I had
an immense crowd, two thousand at the committed myself to doing it when I sent
least and growing e\ery minute. It for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a
blocked the road for a long distance on sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to
either side. I looked at the sea of yellorv knon- his o\\'r1 mind and do definite
faces above the garish clothes-faces all things. To come all that n'a)', ritle in hand,
huppy and excited over this bit of fun, all with two thousand peopie marching at
certain that the elephant was going to be my heels, and then to trail feebly aw'ay,
shot. They were watching me as they having done nothing-flo, that was
would watch a conjurer about to perform impossible. The crowd would laugh at
a trick. They did not like me, but with the me. And my whole life, every white
magical rifle in my hands I was momen- man's life in the East, was one long strug-
tarily worth watching. And suddenly I gle not to be laughed at.
realized that I should have to shoot the But I did not want to shoot the ele-
elephant after all. The people expected it phant. I watched him beating his bunch
of me and I had got to do it; I could feel of grass against his knees, with that
their two thousand wills pressing me for- preoccupied grandmotherly air that ele-
ward, irresistibly. And it was at this mo- phants have. It seemed to me that it
ment, as I stood there with the rifle i. -y would be murder to shoot him. At that
hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, age I was not squeamish about killing an-
the futility of the white man's dominion imals, but I had never shot an elephant
sahib (SAH ib) formerly, a title used in colonial lndia when speaking of or to a European
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