George Orwell's essay, "Shooting an Elephant" is an
addendum to his work, Burmese Days, a novel on the colonialism
of Great Britain. As such, it is concerned with the incident in which Orwell felt
obligated to shoot a rogue elephant, while at the same time there are reflections on the
dilemmas of existing colonialism that continue to surround him. For instance, in the
second paragraph, Orwell writes that he was in favor of " the wretched Burmese," but he
could get nothing into perspective:
I did not even know that the British Empire is
dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires
that are going to supplant
it.
This comment in the
present tense illustrates Orwell's connecting of his act of shooting the elephant with
problems that currently exist for England, thus making his essay a political piece.
Later in this same paragraph, Orwell also comments about his thoughts of killing a
Buddhist monk as a consequence of becoming a
colonialist,
Feelings like these are the normal byproducts of
imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off
duty.
Further, in the next
paragraph, Orwell again comments in present tense upon the nature of despotic
imperialism in critical words. These reflections in the present tense contribute to the
tone of the author, George Orwell, and underscore the final statement of Orwell that he
had shot the elephant "solely to avoid looking a fool." He was and is aware of the
tremendous effect that colonialism has had upon him.
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