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George Orwell and “Shooting an Elephant”
In the essay Shooting an Elephant, the way that George Orwell seemed to relay the details of potentially horrific events with such a calm, objective tone made me a little uneasy. Reading his description of a dead man who had just been trampled, yet noticing no strong emotions really coming through was unnerving. He seemed quite detached and distant. Orwell also seemed to never use semicolons (I didn’t go back through every punctuation mark) and used commas quite frequently. In two other sections of the essay, he uses the latin phrases “in saecula saeculorm” and “in terrorem” (both 149). The use of these phrases seemed to be a way to reinforce his intelligence, to prove that he knew enough or was smart enough to be able to reference a dead language in his writing. In these specific sections as well as the entire essay he demonstrates that he has a fairly complex vocabulary, and has the ability to write complex sentences.
I was also struck by how, for a large part of the essay, Orwell seems to be drawing great attention to the weakness of his character and his willingness to do what is expected as opposed to what he believes in. He states he “… was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces…” (152) and that he really “… did not want to shoot the elephant.” (153). In the end he is only shooting the elephant to please the Burmese, and “to avoid looking a fool.” (156)
