What is the Significance of the Shooting Episode in George Orwell’s

Shooting an Elephant?
As a polemical writer, George Orwell continually busied himself in questioning and shattering
the illusions that the powerful often create to deceive the powerless. Orwell rejected many
of the accepted social and political conventions and his novel and essays clearly reveal him
as a non-conformist. He was especially disgusted with totalitarianism, dictatorship, capitalism,
and imperialism. In Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm he exposed the evils of Stalinism
and dictatorship. But in Shooting an Elephant, one of his most famous essays, Orwell attacks,
as also in Burmese Days, another oppressive undemocratic structure i.e. imperialism.
The story takes place in Lower Burma in the 1920s. From the 16 th to the 20th century, the
British Empire established a political control in India with the purpose of facilitating the
marketing of Asian resources. One of the aftermaths of the colonization was as “anti-
European feeling” by the locals to the dominators that resulted a notorious social class
hierarchy as it is found at the beginning, since the narrator states that the Burmese did not
“seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeers at Europeans”. He
rightly recognized such feelings as “the normal by-products of imperialism”, the inevitable
consequence of imperialist oppression and exploitation.
Though Orwell, ironically belonged to the class of oppressors, he “was all for the Burmese
and all against their oppressors, the British. However, his indictment of imperialism is of
different and more ambiguous nature. But the incident of the killing of an elephant gave him
a better glimpse of the “real nature of imperialism” than he ever had before. It is the incident
that opened his eyes to the “hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East”
Orwell had no intention to kill the elephant as it was not necessary. But he was compelled
to do so by the psychological pressure which was exerted on him as he was marched at the
head of an expectant native crowd, rifle in hand, the irony of his own position struck him.
When he saw the elephant standing quietly in the paddy fields and eating the bunch of
grasses, he felt that it would be a crime to shoot the animal. Even at the last moment he
hesitated and wanted to get out of the difficult situation. But he knew if he went back without
shooting the elephant, he would be ridiculed by the crowd: “And my whole life, every white
man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at”.
Finally, with great unwillingness, he pushed the cartridges into the magazine and lay down
on the road to get a better aim. He did not even know that “in shooting an elephant one
should shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole”. He, however,
pulled the trigger of his rifle. The bullet hit the elephant and a terrible change came over it.
It did not move or fall down. But it was evident that the terrible force of the bullet had
paralyzed the elephant: “He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though
the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down”. It sank
feebly to its knees. Orwell fired again into the same spot. At the second shot, the elephant
made a desperate effort to rise to its feet and “stood weakly upright with legs sagging and
head dropping”. He made the third spot which finished the animal. It gave a loud cry and
came down on the ground like a huge rock. Orwell got up, it was clear that the elephant
would never rise again but it was not yet dead. It was breathing painfully with long rattling
gasps. Its mouth wide open. Orwell waited a long time for the animal to die, but its breathing
did not stop. He fired his two remaining shots aiming to its heart. The thick blood came out
of it like red velvet, but still it did not die; its body did not even tremble when the last two
shots hit it. He brought his small rifle and poured one shot after another into its heart and
down its throat. But even these seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued
as steadily as the ticking of the clock. At last, he could not endure the sight of the elephant
dying so agonizingly. He went away. He heard later that it took another half hour to die.
The shooting of the elephant by the Anglo-Indian officer in Burma raised controversy. People
went on arguing as to whether it was right thing for Orwell to shoot the animal. From the
legal point of view he had done the right thing as the elephant killed a coolie. But the
opinions were divided among the Europeans; the older men supports him whereas the
younger men condemned him for shooting an elephant that killed only an Indian coolie. At
last the death of the coolie saved the writer and he had gained a consolation over his wrong
doing
But the conscience had taken its due, it enfeebled the mind of a scrupulous and sensible
writer, the qualms of conscience made his mind jeopardized. He was frighten whether any
of the other righteously thought he had done this illegal work only to display his hollow
courageousness.

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