What Is The Point Of View Of George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant

Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant is an autobiographical account of his experiences as a sub-divisional police officer during British rule in Burma. Orwell builds his argument through the two main characters, the elephant and its assassin. The British officer, the assassin, acts as a symbol of the British Empire, while the elephant symbolizes the victims, Burmese. Together, the narrator and the elephant turns this incident into an attack on Imperialism. As a British officer, he is hated by much of the natives but he theoretically—and secretly was on their side and against the Empire he was serving. Orwell uses the story of shooting the elephant to make his point clear that he never wanted to kill elephant but in order to live up to the expectation …show more content…
He has to kill it to prove himself to his countryman and to win the praise of the native people. From the beginning till the end, he states that he didn't want to do the obnoxious act but does so and later on he provides justifications for that. Although he killed the elephant, it was just to be accepted by his people but in doing so he followed the imperialism; the very same thing that he despises. The reader can sympathise with him because the British officer were mere a puppet in-front of the native people for whom he was acting like a sahib, so that they will not laugh at the imperialists and wont make himself a laughing stock for them. The narrator as an imperialist, criticizes the attitude of the white-man towards the natives and ironically says “...it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie” (Orwell: 219). To the white-man the value of the elephant seems to be more than the “damn” coolie. The arguments presented makes the reader feel pity for him because he doesn’t want to disappoint the natives, but at the end it shows he fell for imperialism, something he said he was opposed of since the