Shooting an Elephant

OK, close enough to the end of 2017 for me to determine my favourite reads. Shooting an Elephant is my 2017 BEST EBOOK/DIGITAL READ.

This is a great short essay by Orwell, autobiographical.

A tame elephant in ‘must' is running amok in the town and it is left to the sahib to deal with. Not wanting to kill what is in effect an ‘expensive piece of machinery', the sub-divisional police officer is given little choice - the Burmese are not permitted weapons, the elephant has killed a man and caused damage to the town. The locals are entertained by the situation, and look forward to a share of the meat should the elephant die.

Orwell explains his feeling that the British Empire is in withdrawal, and he no longer supports its ruling of Burma, and he sides more with the locals.

“As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.”“For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British.”

Excellently written, Orwell uses his situation with the elephant to explain his feeling that the locals were able to control him by their force of will:

“Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.”“A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.”

Five stars.