It is a narrative essay about the act of shooting an
elephant in a place called Moulmein in Burma. The narrator, a fictional alter-self of
Orwell is a police officer there. Despite the fact that he has a lot of sympathy for the
native people at the heart of his hearts, he is poked by them simply because he is of a
European origin.
When a mad elephant destroys things all
around the place and the narrator is reported about its exploits, he goes out to kill it
with his elephant rifle. This creates quite a breathtaking spectacle for the native
people over there and even though he does not really kill the elephant, he has to kill
it, in the end, simply because of the burden of expectation, set on him by the native
onlookers.
The essay approaches the irony of power and
shows how the victor is also subjected to the constructing gaze of the victim. The
narrator is in a peculiar position in relation to the workings of colonial power and
that his mastery also depends on the acknowledgement of it from the ruled is the ironic
impetus for the supposedly heroic action. The heroic myth of colonial power has to be
sustained and so it has to be displayed through the shooting of the elephant and it is
here that the individual decisions of the man has to be sacrificed
completely.
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