In this essay, Orwell recalls his own experiences of shooting an elephant in Burma. The animal had been terrorizing a bazaar, but the narrator had grave hesitations about killing it. He did it, for fear of being considered weak.
The essay is set in Moulmein, in Lower Burma, and is based on the author’s personal experience with the Indian Imperial Police. Orwell’s job is to respond to the death of a man killed by the elephant. The crowd is urging Orwell to kill the animal but Orwell is aware that the animal is probably no longer dangerous. Despite his reluctance to kill the elephant, Orwell realizes that if he does not do so, he will be humiliated. He goes through with it and the death of the animal is elaborated in excruciating detail.
The elephant, like the Burmese people, has become the unwitting victim of the British imperialist’s need to save face. The content of the essay is interwoven with Orwell’s thesis of how imperialism takes a heavy toll on not only the oppressed but also the oppressors. He says in his essay, “when the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.”
Politics and The English Language
In the 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell talks about how to write English prose in an precise and rhetorically forceful style. He proclaims that a lot of contemporary prose in English is unnecessarily complex and incomprehensible. Orwell considers an over-reliance on Latinate and foreign derived words, stale and cliché phrases and watered-down statements as the reason for the downfall of literature. The essay includes a useful list of rules and norms to follow when composing prose.
The essay is regarded as one of Orwell’s most significant works of criticism for the way it correctly analyses the vague and overly complicated rhetoric that covered the post WW2 political landscape. The oeuvre of George Orwell focuses principally on the dangers of authoritarianism. In “politics”, Orwell articulates his conviction that language manipulation is a powerful device in the arsenal of autocracy.
