Shooting an Elephant

I recently read George Orwell's "Shooting and Elephat" for my British Government class. I advise everyone to do the same (http://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph )It's a small short story about a policeman (possibly Orwell) in the Imperial Indian Police during British occupancy of India. It's about an elephant who goes into its must period and tramples many straw huts, killing one man. The main idea is the struggle the policeman has with whether or not he ought to kill the elephant or not. He does not want to, but when he asked someone to fetch him an elephant gun (to protect him) a crowd started to follow him, for they were sure he would shoot the elephant.

THE policeman has come, through his service in Burma, to disagree with the imperialistic reasons he’s there. In his mind’s battle of whether or not to shoot the elephant, he discovers himself in the position of a colonizing tyranny. He did not want to shoot the elephant, but the natives expect him to kill it. This predicament is similar to that of any colonizing country. As an imperial ruling entity, the natives expect certain actions in these situations, and the ruling entity will likely never disappoint, for it is important that they always deliver an impressive performance to the natives. What is expected by the natives isn’t always what is in the nature of the ruling entity to do, but they will do it in order to keep up the appearance of a tyrannical imperial force. Orwell explains that in this way the tyrant destroys his own freedom because he can only choose to do what the natives expect. For this reason Orwell defies his own will and kills the elephant.
THE extent of my exposure to information regarding the British occupation of India is limited to sources in entertainment media. In every movie I’ve seen, however, there is very little sympathy for the Indians. The British are depicted as arrogant and condescending towards the savage natives. The policeman’s character, after observing the brutal oppression of the natives, became overwhelmed with guilt and came to disapprove of imperialism, and despised the work he did in support of such a cause. His opposition to his work was not vocalized, as he “had to think out (his) problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.” Because of this imposed silence the policeman describes, it could be understood that the there are many others in the same situation that feel the same way, but fail to express themselves. After all, even the policeman succumbed to shooting the elephant in order to save himself from humiliation. To be in a position of authority requires one to assume the tyrannical nature of the post and act as the tyranny would in order to meet the expectations of the ruled.
AFTER just three years in Burma Orwell resigned his post and took up a pen name and a pen to begin his career as a writer. This was one of his first works, which begs me to wonder if Orwell had sold his birthright (his successful career in the Indian Imperial Police) for a pot of message. In addition to the short narrative on the comparison to the British imperial cause that the policeman found, I found an innuendo of this clash of wills (the policeman’s vs. the natives) in his own actions. He could not, for instance, test the elephant’s behavior to determine if it was still mad. Even though he did not fear the elephant (“a white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened”), he could not approach the elephant because if something did go wrong he would be made a laughing-stock. “That,” he says, “would never do.”

I picked up more symbolism of imperialism in the story than the comparison Orwell explains himself. The policeman had never shot an elephant before, and did not know the most effective way to take one down, but out of fear of humiliation he made a guess at where the brain might be and pulled the trigger. The policeman fired three more shots to where he thought the brain was and his last two to where he thought the hear was. The elephant would not die, but laid on its side breathing deeply--even after emptying his Winchester into it, too. Bells went off in my head about the American occupation in Iraq: an imperialist venture set off without a clear indication of how long it might take to subdue the opponent. It has taken much longer than expected with no foreseeable end in sight. The policeman gave up and left the dying elephant in misery while the village people sat like vultures ready to pick the elephant dry. If our new president keeps his promises, we’ll be out of Iraq, leaving their young secular democracy to the wiles of whatever extremist factions that lay in wait to destroy.
BRITAIN had a similar situation with an elephant in India known as Mahatma Gandhi. Through his leadership, India became as an elephant in its must period, but through civil disobedience and non-violent protest. As much as the British shot at it, it would not die, and ended up leaving before his death. Orwell had no idea this would be the case, as it all came to pass much later in history, but I believe that because it has proven analogous of the United States’ invasion and reconstruction in Iraq and the outcome of the British in India countries ought to consider the repercussions of imperialism from the point of view of both the gunman and the elephant as Orwell did.