Sunday, July 18, 2010
Shooting an Elephant
In the beginning, I thought this essay was going to be about Orwell's personal relationship with the locals in India. He made it very clear that he cared about what they thought of him and that he was hurt when they made fun of him. I also thought that the story of him shooting the elephant was just used as an example of his concern for the public's approval. In the end; however, he was really just using the elephant story to show how all Europeans felt when they were occupying another country. How the native's opinion of them was a very important factor. As Orwell stated, "For it is the condition of this rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the "natives", and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect him to do." In other words, Orwell, and others like him, were constantly under scrutany from the locals and were determined to prove their superiority and to not be laughed at. Orewell probably shouldn't have shot the elephant, and he didn't want to, but the crowd's will "made" him do it.
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Nice job Mike I got the same impression.
ReplyDeleteI liked that line you put about proving their superiority. It made me think, if someone needs to prove or justify their authority, it obviously can't be real in the eyes the people. So the fact that he used his political stance only to steep back down to the level of the people seems to cancel out with that superiority in the first place.
ReplyDeleteYou make some really good observations here. The quote you included really does capture a key concept in the text. This idea about superiority is very interesting and Jolie makes some very good points. What do you think Orwell's perspective on this idea of "superiority" would be? What does he say about power and imperialism?
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