Shooting an Elephant Essay -- Literary Analysis, Orwell

In the essay, Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell illustrates his experiences as a British constabulary officer in Lower Burma, and reflects it to the temperament of imperialism. Since anti-European feeling was very bitter due to the British Empires dictatorship in Burma, Orwell is being treated disrespectfully by the Burmese (12). This allows him to hate his job and the British Empire. However, the incident of shooting of an elephant gives him a founder glimpse of the real nature of imperialism the real motives for which despotic government interpret (13). Through his life experiences as a British man, Orwell efficiently demonstrates the disallow effects of imperialism on individuals and society.With the usage of effective diction in his essay, Orwell excellently conveys his emotions and message to his readers. He often uses the word natives for the Burmese Here was I, the unobjectionable man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native agitate (15). By doing so, h e shows his emotions and respect towards the Burmese because calling them natives suggests that he agrees on the fact that they are the true owner of Burma and not the British Empire. Also, by frequently using the word natives, Orwell reminds his readers the existence of imperialism in Burma so that the readers do not simply hang on to the elephant but also yield the message incorporated in the essay. The body of the elephant is compared to machinery as Orwell thinks that killing an elephant is same to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery (15). This comparison makes the readers realize that the British Empire is also like a huge piece of machinery, so the death of it would be a serious matter to both oppressor and concourse being oppressed. When Orwell wa... ...Shooting an Elephant. According to what Orwell is trying to impose, his target audience seems to be youth, adults, and politicians as imperialism is more reflected off of people under these categories. As a pol ice officer, Orwell teaches his readers that imperialism is the worst way to govern a country as it is bad to an individuals way of thinking and value of morality in society. He proved that in an imperialism based system, no one is real dominant over one another as they all end up up being slaves of each other. This results in demolished and demoralized society. Orwell achieves his design outstandingly by playing with rhetorical devices, tone, diction, and sentence structure to become the feeling in the audience the way he desires. In result, Orwell brilliantly uses the incident of killing an elephant to describe the negative effects of imperialism.