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Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell

 

            "Shooting an Elephant," by George Orwell, is an essay about a British police officer in Burma who is called upon to shoot an elephant that has escaped from its owners cage. Running free, the large elephant is quite dangerous and is causing havoc in town. .
             Throughout the story, Orwell allows the main character - as well as the reader - to contemplate things before the elephant is captured. With the elephant continuously running away from kept running away from the soldier. The soldiers morals were preventing him from shooting the animal, but the humongous crowd behind him made him feel as if he had to kill it.
             The soldier knows that it is only an animal, and that it had no intentions of hurting anyone. His first solution to the problem was to simply escort the animal back to his owner, so he could put him back into its cage where the elephant would be safe as well as the locals. However, as we all know, life does not care about your plans, and this was portrayed in the story when many locals as well as business owners that were affected by this incident started demanding the execution of the huge animal. The Indians did not sympathize with the British, therefore this soldier was not appreciated by these people, so he knew that if he killed this elephant, he could earn some points with them. However, his his heart knew it was not right to kill the animal for many different reasons.
             Things became much more serious midpoint through the story, when the soldier finds out that the elephant stepped on top of one of the locals. Now it was not only shops, fences and scratched cars, but it was also the life of a human. By this time of the story, he had many mixed feelings as to whether or not he should kill the elephant because people thought it should be killed, or to not kill it because it was simply wrong. With the death of this person, things became a bit more clear. It appeared as if the balance on what to do was slightly moving towards the death of the elephant, however the soldier still knew in his heart that it was simply not right.


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