In the 19th century, colonial Britain controlled much of the Indian subcontinent, and by the early 20th century, it had colonized Burma (also known as Myanmar). In his 1936 essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” British writer George Orwell, was a young police officer in Burma. Orwell’s essay reflects on the evil of totalitarianism as shown by Britain’s colonization of Asia.
In the essay he describes how, against his better judgment, he wound up shooting an elephant. Domesticated but in “musth,” (the Hindi word which describes a normal period of heightened male elephant testosterone), the escaped animal had been rampaging and had killed an Indian peasant, while the elephant’s Indian mahout, or elephant keeper, was away.
A passport photo of Orwell, taken during his time in the Burmese police force. Public Domain
Goaded by a mob of Burmans (ethnic Burmese natives) and by his bravado, Orwell sheepishly suspects that the elephant would’ve calmed down eventually. He’d fired out of a pretended white man heroism, not retribution for the Indian’s death, or to prevent further destruction.
Worse, once he’d decided to shoot out of false righteousness, that decision, not the beast or the Burmans, prodded him on to shoot again and again to fell the elephant, making him a wanton killer several times over. This haunting memory leads him to ponder the evil of imperialism and the compulsions of despotic regimes. He uses characters in his narrative to reflect on pride, shame, guilt, morality, and, in turn, on good and evil expressions of humanity.
Reflection Versus Action
Orwell’s essay invites readers to think first, and base those thoughts on sound values before taking action. He implies, regretfully, that he hadn’t asked the right questions before he’d fired: Who am I defending? From what? For what? Or, am I attacking? Why?To Orwell, thoughts without the right values of equality, respect, restraint, and freedom, produce actions that propel individuals or countries toward an enslaving self-destruction. Far from widening one’s options, an immoral act narrows it. Once performed, it’s self-reinforcing; only another bullet, or two, separates act from habit.
Just as the elephant towers over helpless natives, Orwell represents the British Empire towering over its colonies. This is a projection of guilt when one uses brute strength and size to tyrannize. Through control of the situation, Orwell has made himself appear a huge beast. Like the Empire, the elephant towers over “quite helpless” natives. It represents the outsized contortion that the otherwise amiable Englishman has become abroad, his oppression shaping the fates of a “sea of … clothes-faces,” and being shaped by them.
Fall of an Empire
At the time Orwell killed the elephant, Britain’s dominion worldwide far outweighed its size, yet it “seemed to tower upward like a huge rock.” England’s population was no more than 30 million, but its Empire extended over nearly a quarter of the world’s land and more than a quarter of its people. Like the elephant felled by bullets, the Empire, bruised and broken by two world wars, took a long time to die; in 1947, it freed its first major colony, India, but it wasn’t until half a century later, in 1997, that it lost its last major colony, Hong Kong, (although Hong Kong’s freedom was suppressed by its worse colonizers, the CCP.)
Orwell’s sketch of the wounded elephant foretells Britain’s decline and death, as a one-time superpower: “stricken, shrunken, immensely old … legs sagging … head drooping … paralysed,” plagued by “an enormous senility.” When a tyrant tramples a foe, “it is his own freedom that he destroys.” Like the dying elephant, Britain is ultimately a shriveled, weak, fallen oppressor who exaggerated its power and strength to fit the public impression of a mighty tyrant.
A Burmese elephant at a logging camp. An elephant splashes dirt on himself after a day of hard work. Ruben Salgado/Getty Images
Orwell also projects himself onto the elephant as a victim. He’s a small man, seemingly harmless like the elephant that seems, “no more dangerous than a cow.” In the public eye, however, he, like the elephant, is threatening: Orwell with his gun, and the elephant, by his size.
Killing Humanity
Orwell projects humanity onto the elephant, and inhumanity onto himself and the Burmans. He writes how the Burmans wait to slay the innocent elephant, but it’s really their own humanity that they’re killing. This also extends to individuals or countries that alienate or subjugate others, and kill their own humanity.Faced with the prospect of doing what he knows with “perfect certainty” he “ought not to,” Orwell fumbles, telling himself that shooting a “working” elephant is a serious matter, like scrapping a “huge and costly piece of machinery.” He tells himself that it’s “worth” more alive than dead. But as his subsequent actions prove, pragmatism is never principle, it can never value life as it should.
It does seem at first that the elephant won’t die; it’s almost indestructible, no matter how many bullets Orwell uses. He explains this in great detail: “but he was not dead ... his breathing did not weaken ... but still he did not die ... breathing continued without a pause.”
Orwell takes shot after shot into the animal’s heart and down its throat, yet the elephant’s gasps “continued as steadily as the ticking of the clock.” Orwell finally walks away and leaves the mob to do the rest, and they set upon and destroy the creature, stripping it “almost to the bones.”
Colonialism of the Mind
Orwell wonders about a colonialism of the mind. All peoples experience a musth when their anger or anxiety needs safe, free expression. In civilized society, that might take the form of an election that votes leaders out of power, or a free press that speaks truth to power that’s voted in. The human will, supposedly master of the mind, or the leader of a citizenry—here, symbolized by the mahout who goes AWOL—must gently, wisely stand guard, when this valid aspect of humanity surfaces; if it doesn’t allow these natural impulses reasonable, legitimate expression, then that same chained humanity will break free and run amok.Elephants are from two regions: Africa and Asia. Europe dominated both without understanding either. Perhaps Orwell uses the elephant as the subject because it signifies the unknown, even the unknowable; it’s otherworldly in the Europe he’s familiar with. He even ascribes a nobility to it. From its height he assumes it sees with greater clarity. The nearer humans get to a scene, the vaguer their understanding.
The essay isn’t titled, “I shot an elephant,” or “The elephant I shot.” Orwell sheds the first person, and embraces the present continuous tense, “shooting,” implying a continuity of crime. It’s as if he’s prophesying that totalitarianism will outlive Britain’s imperialism, and remain an ever-present threat that governments dare not be complacent about.
First, he bears the smaller 44 Winchester; a mere deterrent, “much too small to kill an elephant,” but handy “in terrorem.” As his intent sharpens from defense to offense, he switches to a more powerful, purpose-built “elephant rifle.” In Orwell’s world of European totalitarianisms, the first gun may symbolize Germany’s otherwise benign, apolitical military, the Reichswehr: an arm of containment, nothing more than a righteous, patriotic line of defense. But the second gun is more akin to what Hitler corrupted the “Reichswehr” into: the Nazi party’s racist Wehrmacht, a more decisive tool of offense, to cripple or crush state enemies or targets.
"Elephants and a Panther in the Indian Desert," date unknown, by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. Public Domain
Elsewhere, Orwell wrote, “I am interested in the psychological processes by which pacifists ... with an alleged horror of violence end up ... fascinated by the success and power of Nazism." He hints here at Britain’s pacifist complicity, in thrall of Nazi Germany. The Empire’s silence didn’t cause Hitler’s unchallenged rise throughout the 1930s, but it certainly enabled it. Orwell asks: Should we excuse the brutality of a regime or ignore its threat to the world because we secretly admire or envy its economic or military might?
In his courageous self-critique, Orwell is taking aim not only at the elephant but at himself and the tyrannies he stands for. Britons allowed totalitarianism to be imposed on others, while they privately applauded German totalitarianism. See how introspectively Orwell confesses his awe of that second rifle, “A beautiful German thing.”
The word “Orwellian” envisages features that Orwell often used to characterize totalitarianism’s forceful tendencies: surveillance, manipulation of truth, propaganda, distortion of history, and control over personal thought, word and action. To him, the use of force, more than the itch for it, matters. Absolute power tempts every powerful leader to use absolute force; some succumb and turn into despots. His two rifles represent power, expressed in degrees of force, and how alluring fortified force is to all who apply it.
George Orwell's essay "Killing an Elephant." Penguin Books
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