![]() Orwell fires again and again, multiple shots into the heart and down the throat but the elephant doesn’t flinch and it continues breathing. 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. When Orwell reaches the elephant he realizes that it’s still breathing, totally alive. Orwell goes toward the elephant and so do the Burmans, who are pleased by the spectacle and ready to get the meat. 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. He describes every movement and shift of the elephant’s expression. He fires again and then the animal slowly rises. Slowly the elephant begins to sink down to the earth, onto its knees. Orwell describes this chance that comes over it as a kind of “senility” (34). The elephant stays standing, but it seems to age immensely. He pulls the trigger and the crowd erupts with glee as he hits his mark. Instead of doing the right thing, then, he puts the cartridges into the rifle, gets himself onto the ground and takes aim. 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). Again, the thing that scares him most about that is the humiliation to which he would be subjected by the crowd. 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. But if it doesn’t, then he should leave it. ![]() He should approach it and if it gets mad, then he should shoot it. He realizes that the right thing to do would be to test the animal, to see if it’s still mad. He claims that at that age he isn’t squeamish about killing. To kill it, he says, would seem like murder. As he watches it graze on the grasses, he sees a beautiful and “grandmotherly” quality in the elephant (34). 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, one long struggle not to be laughed at” (33).ĭespite this immense pressure, Orwell feels a strong visceral aversion to killing the elephant. He will let them down and they will see through his act if he doesn’t follow through with shooting the elephant. He becomes a “puppet,” performing power and in that way, “trying to impress the ‘natives’” (33). If he acts as a tyrant, he is, he states, the one who loses his freedom. He realizes that everything he’s doing and everything “the white man” does in the east, is a performance for them, the colonized people. He stands with the gun as though he’s the one with power, yet he is entirely swayed by the will of the crowd. 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 feels an obligation to perform for these people. He realizes that he has no choice but to shoot the elephant. He describes the feeling of their collective will bearing down on him. There are now at least two thousand people watching, eagerly waiting for him to shoot the elephant. He plans to leave it.īut as he turns back he sees that the crowd has grown exponentially. He analyzes this rationale and considers his resolve as he observes the elephant grazing and looking entirely harmless. 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). The elephant is down in the paddy field grazing, entirely oblivious to the crowd. When he sees the massive and remarkable elephant he is even more certain that he doesn’t have any inclination to kill it. He says again that he has no intention of shooting the elephant-again, he merely wants to defend himself. Orwell feels unsettled by the attention and the idea of the spectacle that’s being created. Orwell is led down to some paddy fields below, where the elephant is said to be grazing. ![]() The Burmese are also interested, he says, in the elephant meat. ![]() Orwell remarks that English people would be the same. He attributes their interest to the presence of the gun they want to see the spectacle of the elephant being shot. As he goes, he realizes that a massive crowd has mobilized. The elephant gun arrives and Orwell heads down to see the elephant.
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