“Imperialism”or “the evil thing” in George Orwell’s Shootinjg an Elephant

Eric Arthur Blair who wrote under the pseudo name of George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, and critic and famous for his political satires Animal Farm, an anti-Soviet tale; and Ninenteen Eighty-Four, which shows that the destruction of language is an essential part of oppression. Orwell was an uncompromising individualist and political idealist. V. S. Pritchett called him “the wintry conscience of a generation”. His political views were shaped by his experiences of Socialism, Totalitarianism, and Imperialism all over the world. In his essay Why I write, he admitted that “Every line of serious work that I’ve written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against Totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it”. Again his ambition as a political author was to “make political writing into an art”.

So according to his claim, the essay Shooting an Elephant published in 1950 conveys the political theme, “Imperialism and its effect” which is called by him as “an evil thing”. But before we advance to write on it, we should know about its political background which is mostly related to our topic.

In the 19th century some of the European countries like England, France, and Belgium occupied many nations of Asia and Africa. They imposed colonial rule in these countries. Normally by colonization we understand two sides- the oppressor and the oppressed. But we normally never think of people like Orwell who belong to the oppressor class but suffer for their involvement in imperialism. Among the English writers there have been two views on imperialism. There have been writers like Rudyard Kipling who supported colonization whole heartedly. They thought that Europe was highly civilized and it was the duty of the European people to civilize others. And on the other hand idealists like George Orwell hated imperialism as it is against humanity.

Orwell had written the essay Shooting an Elephant recording his personal experiences, in Moulmein, in lower Burma, while he was employed as a sub-divisional police officer under British rule. He was an anti-imperialist, but his service compelled him to act as “a conventionalized figure of a sahib”. At that time the power and influence of British imperialism were unchallenged all over the world. And because of its evil activities the Europeans who used to live in Burma were hated by the “natives”. The writer said that, “If a European woman went through the bazaars alone, somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress”.

As a police officer he has an obvious target and was baited when ever it seemed safe to do so. The yellow faced young Burmans used to insult the author when he was at a safe distance. Moreover, he informed us that “the young Buddhists priests” were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them seemed to have nothing to do except stand on street corners and jeers at Europeans.

The writer was secretly for the Burmese and all against the oppressors, the British. Orwell did not like his job because the police were employed to torture the people to perpetuate the rule of the imperialist. In his job time, he had seen “the dirty work of Empire at close quarters; the wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups; the grey, cowed faces of long-term convicts”- that oppressed him with an intolerable sense of guilt.

Sometimes, Orwell thought that “the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into Buddhist Priest guts”. Then he mentioned that, “feelings like these are the normal by products of imperialism.

In the case of shooting the elephant, which had ravaged a bazaar and killed a coolie, we get the most evil effect of imperialism upon the writer.