From the beginning when he talked about being hated, to after he killed the elephant and felt relieved that he avoided legal alligations.
In this first person memoir, Orwell holds the central role. He explicitly defines himself in the opening of the piece as being a young police officer who despises the British imperial project in Burma, sides with the Burmese, and yet still feels that he has to prove his authority to the Burmese. As he explains this, he also states that at the time, he was too young to understand this about himself. We thus seem him play out exactly this inner conflict over the course of the story. The actual shooting of the elephant works as an allegory for the British colonial project in Burma. Orwell feels that it's wrong to kill such a large and wild animal. This feeling represents the guilt of attempting to commandeer an entire culture and society. On top of this, shooting the elephant does not kill the elephant; just as policing Burmese society does not put them under the colonizer's control. Orwell puts multiple bullets into the elephant, but in the end he has to leave to bleed to death. This scene reflects the nature of colonial power of Burmese society: the British are incapable of ultimately fulfilling the punitive end of their project in Burma.
