essay about an experience in Burma
What I gleaned from Shooting an Elephant is that people do things, even very horrible things, to appease a group, to avoid personal criticism and to go along with the herd. And they might even do these things subconsciously due to how they're raised or the environment that they're in.
In
“Shooting an Elephant” the killing of the beast assumes enormous significance
because the decision to shoot it has nothing to do with any threat from
it. Orwell’s runaway elephant is peacefully standing in a paddy field
stuffing grass into his mouth when he is finally tracked down. It is only
necessary to wait for his handler to come and lead him home. But a large
crowd had gathered and expects more dramatic action, and Orwell treats this
mood of expectation as the real danger in the situation because it reflects the
worst tendencies of the system under which people live. Orwell must shoot
the elephant because he must live up to the image that the system has imposed
upon him. “A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to
know his own mind and do definite things.” But under such circumstances, he really has no mind of his own, no will that can be exercised independently;
he can only act as a sahib would act. He was an absurd puppet,”
Orwell says, “pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. When
the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” In
the end, he kills the elephant “solely to avoid looking a fool.”
What I gleaned from Shooting an Elephant is that people do things, even very horrible things, to appease a group, to avoid personal criticism and to go along with the herd. And they might even do these things subconsciously due to how they're raised or the environment that they're in.
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