‘Shooting an Elephant’ may be read as a rhetorical attempt to invalidate the authority of colonial power. In the essay, Orwell relates his story of being called upon to take care of a ravaging elephant when he was a sub-divisional police officer working for the British colonial government in Burma. The elephant had killed a man during its attack of ‘must’, but Orwell arrived to find a seemingly harmless elephant. Orwell was reluctant to harm the elephant, let alone kill it, but felt compelled by the anticipation of the ‘native’ spectators to shoot the animal.
In Burma where Orwell worked, anti-colonialism sentiments were strong. Very early on, the essay talks about the young Orwell’s conflicting feelings, which resulted from his disapproval of the ideology of British imperialism and his dislike of the Burmese whose cause he supported but whom, he felt, directed their animosity towards him. At the crucial point of having to decide whether he should shoot the elephant, Orwell the essayist confesses that he was, above all, afraid of appearing foolish in front of his Burmese audience. This was the fear that drove Orwell to eventually shoot the elephant, against his better judgment.
Orwell argues that his experience of having to shoot an elephant against his will is an illustration of how powerless the white colonialist was in the East: the ‘seemingly leading actor of the piece’ was in reality ‘an absurd puppet’ ( Orwell 36). The colonial ideology was constructed on the basis of the notion of white superiority, such that, in Orwell’s words, ‘every white man’s life in the East (becomes) one long struggle not to be laughed at’ (37). In imposing power, the colonialist in fact destroys his own freedom (Orwell 36). By situating his anecdote within the discourse of colonial rule, Orwell transforms a seemingly innocuous anecdote into a narrative of powerlessness and rhetorically debunks the notion of colonial power in ‘Shooting an Elephant’.
Works Cited:
Orwell, George. Shooting an Elephant. Shooting and Elephant and Other Essays. London: Penguin, 1968. 31-40.
