In this powerful essay, George Orwell uses the symbol of when he
was forced to shoot an elephant to describe the foolhardiness and inherent weakness of the
colonial endeavour. He describes how the elephant did not need to be shot and how he really
didn't want to shoot it. However, when he finally reaches the elephant, the crowd that is getting
bigger with every moment pressurises him into shooting the elephant and he feels as if he is
being looked at as if he were a "conjurer about to perform a trick." It is this moment that
triggers an epiphany in Orwell's mind about the futility of what Britain is trying to achieve
through her colonial exploits:
And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the
rifle in my hands, that I first grapsed 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--seeming 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.
Thus it is that he realises
the cental paradox that lies behind colonialism, that "when the white man turns tyrant it is his
own freedom that he destroys." The narrator feels that people expect powerful action from him as
he is the all-powerful white man who rules them. He cannot free himself from the role in which he
has been cast and thus actually destroys his own freedom. It is this point that this essay so
powerfully makes.
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