Summary
The elephant gun arrives and Orwell heads down to see the elephant. As he goes, he realizes that a massive crowd has mobilized. He attributes their interest to the presence of the gun; they want to see the spectacle of the elephant being shot. Orwell remarks that English people would be the same. The Burmese are also interested, he says, in the elephant meat.
Orwell is led down to some paddy fields below, where the elephant is said to be grazing. The excited crowd follows. Orwell feels unsettled by the attention and the idea of the spectacle that’s being created. He says again that he has no intention of shooting the elephant—again, he merely wants to defend himself.
When he sees the massive and remarkable elephant he is even more certain that he doesn’t have any inclination to kill it. The elephant is down in the paddy field grazing, entirely oblivious to the crowd. Orwell analyzes his instinct not to kill the elephant, explaining that the animal is like an elaborate piece of “machinery” and the idea of taking it down is antithetical to his instincts (33). It seems wrong. He analyzes this rationale and considers his resolve as he observes the elephant grazing and looking entirely harmless. He plans to leave it.
But as he turns back he sees that the crowd has grown exponentially. There are now at least two thousand people watching, eagerly waiting for him to shoot the elephant. He describes the feeling of their collective will bearing down on him. He realizes that he has no choice but to shoot the elephant. He feels an obligation to perform for these people.
In explicit terms he describes a revelation that he has about “the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the east” (33). He stands with the gun as though he’s the one with power, yet he is entirely swayed by the will of the crowd. He realizes that everything he’s doing and everything “the white man” does in the east, is a performance for them, the colonized people. If he acts as a tyrant, he is, he states, the one who loses his freedom. He becomes a “puppet,” performing power and in that way, “trying to impress the ‘natives’” (33). He will let them down and they will see through his act if he doesn’t follow through with shooting the elephant. Most importantly though, he will give them cause to laugh at him, and as he says, his “whole life, every white man’s life in the East, [is] one long struggle not to be laughed at” (33).
Despite this immense pressure, Orwell feels a strong visceral aversion to killing the elephant. As he watches it graze on the grasses, he sees a beautiful and “grandmotherly” quality in the elephant (34). To kill it, he says, would seem like murder. He claims that at that age he isn’t squeamish about killing. He realizes that the right thing to do would be to test the animal, to see if it’s still mad. He should approach it and if it gets mad, then he should shoot it. But if it doesn’t, then he should leave it. But the soil is very soft and he’s not a good shot, so he doesn’t trust that he wouldn’t fall back in the mud. Again, the thing that scares him most about that is the humiliation to which he would be subjected by the crowd. If the elephant tramples him into the mud, he’s sure that some of the natives would laugh, “and that would never do,” he says (34).
Instead of doing the right thing, then, he puts the cartridges into the rifle, gets himself onto the ground and takes aim. The rifle has cross-hair sights. He aims for the head.
He pulls the trigger and the crowd erupts with glee as he hits his mark. The elephant stays standing, but it seems to age immensely. Orwell describes this chance that comes over it as a kind of “senility” (34). Slowly the elephant begins to sink down to the earth, onto its knees. He fires again and then the animal slowly rises. He describes every movement and shift of the elephant’s expression. He fires again and though the elephant seems to weaken, he also rises, up onto his hind legs, his trunk flinging up into the sky, before he goes down, trumpeting noisily, and thundering onto the earth.
Orwell goes toward the elephant and so do the Burmans, who are pleased by the spectacle and ready to get the meat. When Orwell reaches the elephant he realizes that it’s still breathing, totally alive. Orwell fires two shots into the area of its heart, but the elephant remains as it is, calmly breathing, though thick blood pours from the wounds. Orwell fires again and again, multiple shots into the heart and down the throat but the elephant doesn’t flinch and it continues breathing.
In the end Orwell cant’ take it anymore and he walks away. He hears later that it took the elephant half an hour to die. The Burmans, he hears, stripped the bones of all the meat.
Back with the other police officers there’s discussion about whether or not it was the right thing to do. The essay closes with the tellingly racist claim of some of the young officers that it’s wrong to kill such a beautiful creature, just because it killed a Burman.
Analysis
The essay has a strong narrative element that serves to illustrate Orwell’s critique of British Imperialism. While Orwell presents a candid analysis of imperialist behavior, his ideas are also demonstrated through the events of the narrative. Orwell’s analysis of his own experience of shooting an elephant is simultaneously an analysis of colonial power. In realizing that he has to perform for the people, Orwell realizes the performative aspect of the encounter between colonizer and colonized. The pressure that he feels to perform emerges and is revealed as an essential engine of imperialism. What’s most important is that we see that the pressure the colonizer feels to perform comes down to personal discomfort: specifically, the fear of humiliation. In the climax of the narrative we see that Orwell will go against all of his instincts and better judgments and do something that feels entirely wrong by shooting an animal that he describes as “peaceful” and “grandmotherly,” rather than be laughed at or ridiculed in any way by the Burmese crowd. The fear of humiliation, we thus see, is a powerful motivating force in the policing and upholding of the British Empire. Orwell seems to be suggesting that when imperial power is reduced to individual performers (policemen and military rulers, etc.) the fear of ridicule may be the most pervasive and persistent motivators.
In order for the colonizer to maintain their image of power, they must be decisive. Orwell has the rifle in his hands, so now he must use it. If he hesitates or chooses not to shoot, the crowd will see through his performance of dominance, and in that way they will see through the entire charade of British imperial power.
The fear of being laughed at is the most important aspect of Orwell’s personal fear and this, he suggests, goes beyond himself. The crowd, the people on the streets, the Buddhist priests, etc. all have the power to laugh and to ridicule him. This is something they all deploy, something they make use of. This is where Orwell's personal pride becomes, despite his own wishes, entangled in imperial power.
Orwell despises the British Empire and hates its presence in Burma; he says that he’s on the side of the Burmese. Yet he’s compelled to uphold the imperialist image of power. The thing that drives him isn’t some idea of the importance of the British empire; it’s not for the glory of the empire; it’s the simple fear of looking ridiculous. He is driven out of personal pride, and yet this leads him to further a much larger political project, that of upholding the image of British imperial power. Orwell explicitly attributes this same fear of ridicule to all other white men in the East. He deduces an important motive of imperial power to the single actor’s fear of embarrassment.
His aversion to killing the elephant is vital in the story. Though he doesn’t elaborate on it or break it down beyond the one passage, he explains in simple clear terms that he doesn’t want to do it. Orwell’s lack of affect in his language in the part is important. His language is honest: he is going against his will.
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.
