STUDENT HANDOUT 1: VOCABULARY FOR "SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT"
Background Information:
In 1858 the British Crown took control of India and
ruled India as a colony. By 1886,
British rule in India had expanded through war to include two-thirds of present
day Burma. Many British officials and
soldiers came to rule Burma, including George Orwell. Orwell joined the British Imperial Police
Force in 1922 and was stationed in Burma for 5 years. He later resigned his post and returned to
England to become a writer. Orwell
published “Shooting an Elephant” in 1936 and it was broadcast by the BBC Home
Service in 1948.
Vocabulary for Reading:
Imperialism- the extension of power, authority, or influence
over other countries through direct or indirect rule
Betel juice- bright red juice released from chewing a betel nut,
often used as a stimulant
British Raj- term for British rule in India, which includes
British rule in Burma
Anglo-Indian- a person of British descent living in India or
Burma, alternately a person with both Indian and British ancestry
Despotic- ruling with absolute authority
Bazaar- a marketplace or shopping quarter, often made up of
small shops
Must- a temporary condition of male elephants caused by a
rise in testosterone, resulting in aggressive behavior
Dravidian- a person from Southern India
Coolie- a manual laborer (the term is now often considered
a racial slur)
Dominion- the power or right to govern or control
Sahib- a polite term for “Mr.”
Mahout- a person who trains and handles elephants
STUDENT HANDOUT 2: TEXT OF ORWELL'S SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT
“Shooting an Elephant”
by George Orwell
In
Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only
time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I
was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of
way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot,
but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably
spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target
and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped
me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other
way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In
the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the
insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves.
The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands
of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand
on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
All this was perplexing
and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism
was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the
better. Theoretically — and secretly, of course — I was all for the Burmese and
all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated
it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the
dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the
stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term
convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos —
all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get
nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think
out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the
East. 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. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I
served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my
job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an
unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the
will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in
the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings
like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian
official, if you can catch him off duty.
One day something
happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in
itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real
nature of imperialism — the real motives for which despotic governments act.
Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the
town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar.
Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do,
but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out.
I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant,
but I thought the noise might be useful in
terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the
elephant's doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which
had gone ‘must’. It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when
their attack of ‘must’ is due, but on the previous night it had broken its
chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was
in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and
was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had
suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were
quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut,
killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had
met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his
heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.
The Burmese
sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter
where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of
squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside.
I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.
We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as
usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in
the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you
get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that
the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another,
some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my
mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little
distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of ‘Go away, child! Go away
this instant!’ and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner
of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed,
clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the
children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man's dead body
sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked,
and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant
had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its
trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the
rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot
deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified
and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes
wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable
agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the
corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast's foot
had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as
I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend's house nearby to borrow an
elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with
fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.
The orderly came back in
a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had
arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few
hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of
the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle
and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They
had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their
homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun
to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It
made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant — I had
merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary — and it is always
unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and
feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of
people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts,
there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a
thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and
dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road,
his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd's approach.
He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean
them and stuffing them into his mouth.
I had halted on the
road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought
not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant — it is
comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery — and obviously
one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance,
peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought
then and I think now that his attack of ‘must’ was already passing off; in
which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back
and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided
that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn
savage again, and then go home.
But at that moment I
glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two
thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long
distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish
clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the
elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer
about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in
my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I
should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I
had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward,
irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my
hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's
dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front
of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in
reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those
yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns
tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow,
posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition
of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives’,
and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He
wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I
had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to
act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do
definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people
marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no,
that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every
white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
But I did not want to
shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees,
with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me
that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about
killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow
it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the
beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a
hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five
pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some
experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them
how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no
notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close
to him.
It was perfectly clear
to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards
of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took
no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But
also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a
rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If
the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a
toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my
own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with
the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have
been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of
‘natives’; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind
was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me
pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian
up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would
laugh. That would never do.
There was only one
alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road
to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as
of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable
throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a
beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in
shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from
ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to
have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front
of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.
When I pulled the
trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick — one never does when a shot
goes home — but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd.
In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the
bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant.
He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked
suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of
the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what
seemed a long time — it might have been five seconds, I dare say — he sagged
flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have
settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired
again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed
with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging
and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him.
You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of
strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as
his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock
toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first
and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that
seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.
I got up. The Burmans
were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant
would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically
with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and
falling. His mouth was wide open — I could see far down into caverns of pale
pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not
weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought
his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still
he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured
breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great
agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage
him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It
seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet
powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my
small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They
seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the
ticking of a clock.
In the end I could not
stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour
to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was
told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.
Afterwards, of course,
there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner
was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I
had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog,
if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The
older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot
an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any
damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been
killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for
shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that
I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
George Orwell: ‘Shooting an Elephant’
First published: New Writing. — GB, London. — autumn 1936.Reprinted:
— ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’. — 1950.
— ‘The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage’ — 1956.
— ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.
— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
STUDENT HANDOUT 3: ELEPHANT VENN DIAGRAM
STUDENT HANDOUT 4: ANALYZING A PRIMARY SOURCE
Focus Question: What was George Orwell’s perspective of British imperialism in Burma?
Title of Source: Shooting an Elephant
Author: George Orwell
Genre (letter, cartoon, photo?): Essay
When and Where
|
Place and Time: Where and When was it published?
|
Historical Context: What was going on during this event or era/period?
|
Who
|
Author: Background, sex, race, social class, education; What is his/her
perspective?
|
Audience: Who is the intended audience?
|
Observations
|
|||
Quote
Quote from the text
|
Meaning
What does the quote mean?
|
Message/Argument
What the author is trying to say?
|
Questions
What do I think?
|
“All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire
I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make
my job impossible.”
|
Living in
Burma and working as an imperial official, Orwell felt that imperialism was
wrong, but he also did not care for the anti-imperialism feelings of natives
in Burma.
|
The
realities of imperial rule effected imperial rulers by creating a conflicted
feeling – love and hate of the people they ruled.
|
Is this
an experience singular to Orwell?
Why might
Orwell feel like this?
|
“For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism
was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the
better.”
|
|||
“As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can
perhaps make clear. In a job like that
you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.”
|
|||
“With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an
unbreakable tyranny . . . with another part I thought that the greatest joy
in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts.
Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism…”
|
|||
“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in
my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white
man's dominion in the East.”
|
|||
“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant
it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing
dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.”
|
|||
“For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his
life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to
do what the “natives” expect of him. He
wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
|
|||
“And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one
long struggle not to be laughed at.”
|
|||
“Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the
shooting of the elephant . . . legally I had done the right thing . . . Among
the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the
younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a
coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie.”
|
|||
STUDENT HANDOUT 5: WRITING AN ANALYTICAL AND SUMMARY PARAGRAPH
Part 1: Writing An Analytical Paragraph
Focus Question: What
was George Orwell’s perspective of British imperialism in Burma?
George Orwell’s perspective of British imperialism in Burma
was _______________________________________________________(thesis
statement).
For example, in ____________________________(title of text), ________________________________(author), commented about his job
by saying____________________________________________________________________.”
(quote
from text)
But later he comments about why he does his job, exclaiming,
“___________________________________________________________________.”
(quote from
text)
This is demonstrated when Orwell
________________________________________________________________________.
(evidence from primary source)
So, while he
________________________________________________________________
(analysis)
__________________________________________________________________________.
Part 2: Writing a Summary
Paragraph
Focus Question: Considering
Student
Handout 3: Elephant Venn Diagram and Student
Handout 4: Analyzing a Primary Source,
explain the differences in the way elephants are portrayed in art and the way
Orwell portrayed elephants in his story.
How do you account for these differences in perspective?
Summary Paragraph
|
TEACHER KEY 1: ELEPHANT VENN DIAGRAM
TEACHER KEY 2: ANALYZING A PRIMARY SOURCE
Focus Question: What was George Orwell’s perspective of British imperialism in Burma?
Title of Source: Shooting an Elephant
Author: George Orwell
Genre (letter, cartoon, photo?): Essay
When and Where
|
Place and Time: Where and When was it published?
1936 – London, about
Burma in the 1920s
|
Historical Context: What was going on during this event or era/period?
British imperialism in
Southeast Asia;
|
Who
|
Author: Background, sex, race, social class, education; What is his/her
perspective?
Indian born British,
imperial service family, served in Burma 1922-27, service led to Orwell’s
disdain for imperialism and respect (?) for Burmese people.
|
Audience: Who is the intended audience?
English citizens
|
Observations
|
|||
Quote
Quote from the text
|
Meaning
What does the quote mean?
|
Message/Argument
What the author is trying to say?
|
Questions
What do I think?
|
“All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire
I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to
make my job impossible.”
|
Living in
Burma and working as a imperial official, Orwell felt that imperialism was
wrong, but he also did not care for the anti-imperialism feelings of natives
in Burma
|
The
realities of imperial rule effected imperial rulers by creating a conflicted
feeling – love and hate of the people they ruled.
|
Is this
an experience singular to Orwell?
Why might
Orwell feel like this?
|
“For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism
was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the
better.”
|
Imperialism is a bad thing and Orwell wants out as soon as he can.
|
Orwell thinks imperialism is evil and he wants to quit his job as
soon as possible.
|
|
“As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can
perhaps make clear. In a job like that
you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.”
|
Orwell hates his job and the British empire is doing bad things.
|
Although imperialism seems good to most British people, as a
police officer Orwell is able to see the bad things that Britain is doing in
India/Burma.
|
|
“With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an
unbreakable tyranny . . . with another part I thought that the greatest joy
in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts.
Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism…”
|
Orwell saw the negative dominant power of the British rulers in
India/Burma, but he also wanted to kill the Indian rulers. He claims these feelings are a normal
result of imperialism.
|
Imperialism causes people with power to become conflicted. On one hand he thinks that the British
rulers have too much power, but on the other hand he wants to the kill the
Indian rulers.
|
|
“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in
my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white
man's dominion in the East.”
|
The white men do not have as much power as they think they do in
the East.
|
Even though the British (the white man) thinks that he has power
in India, that power doesn’t actually mean anything.
|
|
“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant
it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing
dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.”
|
When the white man took total power he gave up his freedom.
|
When someone takes full control over another person or group of
people, he must act the part at all times, thus giving up his freedom.
|
|
“For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his
life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to
do what the “natives” expect of him.
He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
|
The rulers in imperialism spend all their lives trying to impress
those they are ruling and he eventually turn into that role.
|
People who rule over others are worried of embarrassing
themselves, therefore they are constantly trying to impress those they
rule. The rulers eventually believe
that they are better than the imperialized.
|
|
“And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one
long struggle not to be laughed at.”
|
Orwell and any white people in India are constantly avoiding being
laughed at.
|
With imperialism impressing those without power is of most
importance.
|
|
“Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussion about the
shooting of the elephant . . . legally I had done the right thing . . . Among
the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the
younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a
coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie.”
|
The killing of the elephant was a topic people discussed as right
or wrong. Older Europeans thought it
was the right thing to do while the younger Europeans thought it was the
wrong thing to do since elephants were of more value than Indians.
|
Not all British think of the Indians/Burmese the same. The younger British feel that the elephant
has more worth than the Indians, they have seen the Indians as commodity for
so long that they are accustomed to thinking of them as objects or animals
rather than people.
|
|
TEACHER KEY 3: WRITING AN ANALYTICAL AND SUMMARY PARAGRAPH
Writing an Analytical
Paragraph Using the Primary Source
Focus Question: What
was George Orwell’s perspective of British imperialism in Burma?
George Orwell’s perspective of British imperialism in Burma
was one of conflict. For example, in Shooting an
Elephant, George Orwell
commented about his job by saying “As for the job I
was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear.” But later he
comments about why he does his job, exclaiming “And
my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to
be laughed at.” This is demonstrated
when Orwell writes about killing the elephant in
front of a crowd of Burmese people, even though he did not want to kill the
animal. So, while
he did not like his job or feel that the imperial
policies were positive, he recognized that he must do his duties to avoid being
laughed at by colonized people.
Part 2: Writing a
Summary Paragraph
Focus Question:
Considering Student Handout 3:
Elephant Venn Diagram and Student Handout 4: Analyzing a Primary Source, explain the
differences in the way elephants are portrayed in art and the way Orwell
portrayed elephants in his story. How do
you account for these differences in perspective?
Summary Paragraph
|
The importance of elephants in Burma is
demonstrated in both Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” and the images from the
Asian Art Museum collection, but the power of elephants is approached in
different ways in the primary sources.
Elephants are useful and valuable to both British and Burmese people
in Burma. In the images elephants are
portrayed as peaceful and powerful, worth decorating and riding on in a
procession. In the story, although
Orwell sees the elephant as “grandmotherly” he also describes the elephant as
a violent threat. Orwell’s main
character chooses to shoot the elephant to demonstrate his power as a
colonizer. In art, elephants are a
symbol of the British power in Burma to possess exotic animals and use them
to impress the Burmese. In the story,
elephants have power that threatens British control. These sources demonstrate two different
ways to view imperialism and the way British officials used elephants to
demonstrate their power.
Starting for a Tiger Hunt: The elephants in this drawing have
exaggerated features and body parts, making them seem exotic or even
comical. They appear nonthreatening,
unlike Orwell’s elephant.
Pagoda at Ramisseram: This elephant appears to be a natural part
of the Burmese landscape, pictured in front of a temple with a small child
running ahead of it. Unlike Orwell’s
elephant, which terrorizes the Burmese...
Elephant at Work, Rangoon: This photograph shows an elephant at work
in a lumber yard, carrying a heavy load with its mahout staring directly into
the camera. This is what Orwell’s
elephant might have looked like when not in must.
The Imperial Durbar: This brightly colored image shows an imperial
procession with decorated elephants carrying important political figures. In Orwell’s story, however, there are no
processions and the elephant is among the Burmese.
Elephant With Riders in Jaipur: This photograph could almost be a picture
of tourists off for an afternoon ride; there’s no sense of threat here,
unlike Orwell’s elephant.
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