George Orwell’s 1936 memoir-essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, recounts the writer’s killing of an unruly elephant when he was a policeman in colonial Burma. Orwell reflects on the injustice of the British Empire, on his own ambivalence about enforcing imperial rule, and on the quasi-theatrical demands of that enforcement. Critics have praised the prose style of “Shooting an Elephant”, and it often features as a model in post-secondary writing instruction.
“Shooting an Elephant” belongs at the center of any discussion of Orwell’s complex thoughts on imperialism. Interested readers should also consult “A Hanging”, “Marrakech”, “Reflections on Gandhi”, and his 1942 essay “Rudyard Kipling”. Likewise, the novel Burmese Days, and his analysis of the Empire in
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Citation: Carson, Robert. "Shooting an Elephant". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 October 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2068, accessed 23 November 2024.]
