Shooting An Elephant Summary

Emily Burleson          

English 101-132

Mr. Neuberger

11 September 2012

Summary

“Shooting an Elephant”

            George Orwell was a sub-divisional police officer in the town of Moulmein, in Lower Burma. He himself was an Englishmen. This put him as a much hated man to the natives. He was constantly ridiculed and bulled by the people while he was off duty and sometimes on duty depending on the circumstances.  While on duty one day, he received a call about a wild animal on the loose causing mayhem amongst the people. An elephant was on the loose; not a wild elephant; but a tame one that had went “must” with the only person who could calm the beast, its mahout, being twelve hours away due to a wrong turn. Orwell grabbed a gun, just a small one, not big enough to do much of anything and took off to find the animal. The closer he had gotten to the location of the elephant the more the native’s stories became unjust. It wasn’t long before he realized he was on the right track. Women came stumbling out of their bamboo shacks screaming at naked children to scurry away. He would soon find a man stomped into the soft muddy ground. After this sight he sent for an elephant riffle and bullets. He marched to find the creature with people following him. The natives gave him information to the ware a bouts of the animal and Orwell set his sights toward a field a couple hundred yards away. Upon reaching his destination he watched the elephant grazing, being “no more dangerous than a cow”. As he watched the animal graze in the field he became in deep thought to himself, teetering on the notion to shoot the beast. There were many factors that had to come into play when it came to the decision to shoot such as the owner, the wellbeing of the animal and most of all how he felt about shooting the elephant. In his mind it didn’t seem just to shoot. After all, the animal was now not hurting anyone and was peaceful. To Orwell looked at the now thousands of “yellow faces” that gathered to watch the killing of the beast. Not for what it had done to their homes, not for the killing of a man but for the pure enjoyment of seeing a show. Orwell thought to himself to test the stability of the elephant. To walk about twenty five feet from him and see what he did. That could be more dangerous than the alternative. In the end the eyes of the people that had despised him won his decision over. He got down on the road to have a better aim and shot the gun. He stuck the beast through the ear and it looked as if it just stunned it. He took another shot and even that didn’t seem to get to the elephant. Orwell eventually used all five bullets he had for the elephant gun. The animal had finally fallen. He approached the beast to find the animal was alive with a steady breath. Orwell sent for his gun. Filled with guilt from what he had just done, all he wanted to do was put the beast out of its misery to save it from the agony. The repeatedly shot the elephant in where he imagined the heart would be. When that didn’t work he gave up and left. It was too much to bear to watch what he had done. Later he learned upon his leave it had taken an hour and a half for the helpless creature to fully pass and by the afternoon the people of Moulmein to strip it to practically bone. After the fact Orwell justified himself and what he had done because the creature had taken the life of a man. Legally he was in the right and that is all he had to cling too. Not everyone had felt that way but in the end Orwell could live with the decision that he made on that day and to him that is all that mattered. He shot an animal to avoid looking like a fool in the eyes of people that never respected him in the first place.