Shooting an Elephant

Orwell gives substantial attention to his description of the elephant’s death. In clear prose he moves through every stage and detail of the elephant’s motions from the first shot, when it seems to age “a thousand years,” to the moment when it sinks to its knees, to its slow rise on the third shot, that causes it to go up on its hind legs in slow motion. The attention to descriptive detail in this moment speaks to the value that Orwell puts on the elephant’s life and indeed, the impact of its killing. This is the most dramatic part of the essay, seeing the elephant go down. In giving it this attention, we come to feel the inner conflict at work in the essay, a conflict at the heart of imperialism.