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Summary: "Shooting an Elephant" ist eine bedeutende Erzählung von George Orwell, die auf seinen Erfahrungen als Polizeibeamter in Burma basiert. Der Text bietet einen tiefen Einblick in die koloniale Situation und die persönlichen Konflikte des Autors. Die Geschichte wird oft als autobiografischer Essay beschrieben und kritisiert den europäischen Kolonialismus. Orwells Fähigkeit, komplexe Themen durch lebendige Charaktere und Symbolik zu vermitteln, macht diesen Text zu einer wichtigen Lektüre für Interessierte an Literatur und Geschichte.
Story Log: Shooting an Elephant
1. Author
2. Cultural, historical and political backround
3. Setting
4. Plot Summary
5. Characters and their major traits
6. Topics/Major Issues
7. Narrative structure
8. Language and Imagery
9. Important Vocabulary
10. Links to other stories
Author: George Orwell
The name „George Orwell“ ist he pseudonym assumed by Eric Arthzr Blair (1903-1050).d to shed his old identity as a middle-class former public schoolboy and colonial officer. Much of his writing is influenced by personal experience and so it isn’t surprising, that “Shooting An Elephant” is based on an incident in Orwell’s life, during his five-year service in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police.
His growing resentment of imperial rule led him to resign and start a writing career in Europe. Much of his writing has a documentary quality and can be considered to be literary journalism rather than fiction.
Shooting an Elephant was published in 1936.
Cultural, historical and political backround:
Shooting an Elephant is set at a time when British colonialism was no longer at its height. After the barbaric WWI the European coloinizers began to lose confidence in their presumed superiority over the colonized peoples. Oppositional movements of resistance and self-affirmation were beginning to emerge in Britain’s colonies and there were increasing demands for independence.
Shooting an Elephant is set in the British colony of Burma, which was annexed in 1852 and became part of the Empire in 1886 as a province of British India. The story illustrates the beginning of anti-British feeling in Burma.
The story is sometimes described as an autobiographical essay, because it is based on an event which took place when Orwell was a police officer in Burma. This personal backround and the first person point of viewsuggests that it reflects Orwell’s own opinion about colonialism. But it it also descripiative and narrative.
Setting:
Moulmein, Burma.
Moulmein is a shabby and misserable town. The inhabitants are so poor, that they even take the elephant’s meat, which is not usually considered to be edible. The relation between the native population and the British officers is very bad, especially the Buddhist priest treat them in a disrespectful way and badger them whenever they can.
Plot Summary:
On the surface the story describes an incident in which the narrator, a British police officer in Burma, is asked to investigate reports of a dangerous elephant, which is gone wild. Under pressure from the local crowd he feels forced to shoot it although he dows not want to. At a deeper level the story is a criticism of European colonialism.
Characters and their major traits:
The Narrator:
Eric Blair, the policeman serves with the colonial police force in Burma. He is the eye-witness and the principal actor in the story. The story is an autobiographical one, written 10 years after the incident, therefore we have ti distinhuish between 2 personae:
1. The young inexperienced officer who is often enraged by the Burmese population, but basecally strongly critical of the British Empire and feels guilty. He admits to quit his job sometime.
2. The narrator, who knows that the tyranny of the empire is slowly dying.
The claims of the police officer are often questionable. The reader should reflect his judgement on others or his claim of not wanting to shoot the elephant, because this claim is relativated in the last sentences of the story.
Orwell speaks of the crowd as if it were one person. It speaks with one voice, has an uniform will, laughts or expresses excitement. The picture of the corwd is tinged by an imperial mindset, emphazising their inferiority. The author describes them also as victims of colonialism.
The Elephant:
The sheer length of the description devoted to the elephant, its elaborated style, the choice of words which document the various stages of its death, and the strong emotional involvement of the narrator sets this passage clearly apart from the rest of the text.
The animal is endowed with human traits and has hos own history as a valuable working animal. It can be considered as a tragic hero and can be seen as the second major character beside the narrator.
Conflicts:
The most obvious conflict is between the British colonial administrators and the native Burmese. There is hatred, distrust and resentment on both sides. On a personal level the narrator, as a representative of the colonial government, clashes with the local people, who harass him whenever they think they can get away with it.
Their frustration and resentment is openly expressed when they force him to kill the elephant. The external conflict between the young policeman and the crowd is paralleled by the narrator's personal dilemma. His moral standards differ from those of the institution he works for, the British Empire, and he has to decide whether to kill a valuable working animal in order to save the pride of the institution.
As a representative of the empire he is responsible for ensuring that it is not undermined. The narrator is also in conflict with his colleagues, for, unlike them, he hates colonialism and is ashamed of the part he is playing in it: "Theoretically - and secretly, of course - I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British" (p. 69, Is. 19-21).
Wearing the mask of the authoritariancolonizer means adopting someone else's moral code. Paradoxically, this takes away the colonizer's freedom to act according to his own conscience and turns him into a prisoner of his own ideology: "When the white man rums tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys" (p. 74. Is. 7-8}.
The theme that imperialism was harmful not only to the colonized peoples, but also to the colonizers themselves is found in many other works critical of the colonial period (for example the stories by Conrad, Maugham and Lessing discussed in this book).
Hatred of imperialism:
Orwell's whole life was spent defending the weak and fighting oppression in any form. Consequently, he bitterly opposed imperialism. The policeman gives voice to his feelings: "I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing [ .]. As for the job I was'doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear" (p.69, Is.l7ff.).
Both the British policeman and the elephant can be interpreted as symbols: the former as a disillusioned representative of the colonial power, the working animal as a tool in the hands of the colonialists. The fact that a representative of the colonial power destroys its own tool has been interpreted by some critics as the internal contradiction of colonialism.
They argue that colonialism carries the seeds of its own destruction within itself. In this sense the slow, agonizing death of the elephant can be compared with the decline and final collapse of colonialism. The symbolism is strengthened by the way the animal dies - a long, slow process, the end of which resembles an enormous natural disaster such as a landslide or earthquake.
Crowd power:
He also knows that if he does not fulfil their demands their hatred will reappear. Then they will not only laugh at him, but might even lynch him.
Narrative structure:
- The text contains elements of both an essay and a short story without losing its unitiy
- The narrative elements consist of a clear plotline and vivid descriptions; the qualities of the essay consist in personal and general reflections on the colonial situation
- The reflective passages delay the course of action and heighten the curiosity of the reader
- The constant repetition of the phrase ‛I did not want to shoot the elephant’ blinds the text together and challenges the reader’s moral judgement
Language and Imagery
- The language of the text is a carefully arranged mixture of colloquial and elaborate of expression.
Important Vocabulary
The narrator
- imperial administrator , ambiguous, biased, take sides with sb., be caught between sth. and sth. Else, sense of guilt, feel humiliated, ashamed, distressed, enraged, comply with sb.’s demands
the crowd
- harass sb., disrespect sb., despise sb., disillusioned, agitated, unanimity, destroy/lose authority, inflict sth. on sb.
The elephant
- agony, agonizing, transform, victimized, rogue, run amok, pathetic, arouse pity
Links to other stories:
The isolation of the colonial agent is epitomized in the antagonistic situation of the lonely policeman facing an immense crowd of natives. No longer master of his own will he becomes an instrument of imperial power and is driven towards an act of killing.
This isolation can be seen in the two Belgians in Conrad’s ‛An Outpost of Progress’ and the characters in Lessing’s ‛The Second Hut’.
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