Shooting An Elephant Diction

Eric Arthur Blair, known to most by his pseudonym George Orwell, is best known for his opinionated, dystopian-future novels. In addition to his success as a novelist, Orwell was also an accomplished author of non-fiction. In his non-fiction story “Shooting an Elephant,” published in 1936, Orwell discusses his experiences working as a sub-divisional police officer in Burma and how his experiences changed his perspective on imperialism and society. Orwell uses a variety of literary techniques in order to portray the deteriorating state of the British Empire, as well as his own waning innocence; however, his use of vivid descriptions and symbolism are his strongest tools. He published “Shooting an Elephant” at the age of thirty-three, fifteen …show more content…
His employment of these techniques are particularly effective in his descriptions of the trampled coolie and the death of the elephant. He devotes several paragraphs, enhanced by his liberal use of morbid diction, to each description. Orwell’s account of the elephant’s death is particularly gruesome: “Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die…The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock” (Orwell 1432). Orwell uses his descriptions and diction to make his audience feel uncomfortable and sympathetic to his arguments that imperialism is detrimental and dying in India in the 1920s. Had he simply stated that the elephant died, there would be no parallel to the crumbling of the empire and imperialism. Additionally, confesses that he only killed the elephant “to avoid looking like a fool” (1432). Orwell shows that although he appears to have an important role in Burma, he is just a puppet of imperialism. Hence, the death of the elephant could be symbolic of the death of Orwell’s innocence in addition to being symbolic of the death of the …show more content…
The first, and more subtle, of which is the symbol of the elephant’s blood. He writes of the elephant’s “red velvet” blood. The British monarchy has long used velvet as a covering for crowns. The crown, along with the crown jewels, is symbolic of the British monarchy. By describing the blood spurting from the elephant’s heart as “velvet”, Orwell transforms the blood into a symbol of the dying British Empire and hence, the death of imperialism. The second symbol Orwell uses is the death of the elephant. Orwell’s painfully drawn-out description of the death mirrors the death of an empire: slow and agonizing. Furthermore, Orwell mentions that the villagers “had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon” (1432). New empires often steal the ideas and resources of fallen empires and claim the spoils as their own. Empires often take many years, sometimes centuries to fall victim to their blunders. The British Empire was intact for over five hundred years, making it one of the most dominant empires to have existed. It took years for the Empire to collapse, just like it took the elephant half an hour to die after being shot several times through the heart. The symbol of the elephant’s death is particularly