In George Orwell’s short story, “Shooting an Elephant”, he uses vivid imagery and complex role dynamics to tell about his personal struggle when he was pressured into shooting a live elephant. As a sub-divisional police officer in the in the British colony of Moulmein, he expresses the difficulty of earning the respect of the townspeople. He truly describes this divide right off the bat with his opening sentence. He begins, “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people—the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me” (53). Right away by using strong negatively connotated language such as “hate”, he embeds in the reader the true role that he plays in this community and in this story. By eluding that the hate comes from his important status, creates curiosity among the reader to wonder why he lacks this respect. He later writes, “There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans” (53). His unique language choice here with the word “jeer” puts a very specific imagine into the reader mind. Using a less common word like this presents the idea that this was a very uncommon situation that he was dealing with in Moulmein.
Towards the latter portion of the story, Orwell uses an analogy to describe the isolation and pressure he felt when trying to decide whether or not to shoot the elephant. He states, “They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching” (55). Referring to himself and his rifle as magical shows the true isolation he was going through. With this comparison he is telling the reader that to the locals, he was just an act of entertainment. Although there is no magic going on, through this analogy he clearly portrays the pressure that he was feeling to give the people what they wanted.
Jayden Hanna Eng125 Blog 