‘Shooting an Elephant’: A Defining Moment in the Life of George Orwell

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            George Orwell is one of the most influential writers on our time because of our connection our society has to his works. Orwell write many pieces of literature from “Animal Farm” to “1984.” Like most people, Orwell’s adulthood was affected by his childhood, and he wrote about many of his experiences in his novels and papers. Throughout his life we can see the common theme of a government that has too much control, which we can see in one of Orwell’s most famous essays “Shooting an Elephant.”

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            Eric Blair, also known by his famous pen name George Orwell, which most of the world knows his by, was born in Motihari, Bengal, in the British colony of India in 1903. Orwell’s father worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service while he lived with his father. Orwell’s mother then brought him to live with her and his sisters in England when Orwell was only one year old. After finishing college at Eton, Orwell went to work in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, but later resigned in 1928 and returned to England. After his stay in Burma Orwell hated imperialism, which we can see in his writings of ‘Shooting an Elephant,” “A Hanging”, and his first novel “Burmese Days.” For several years Orwell lives in poverty, and sometimes even homeless, but eventually found a job as a school teacher until health reasons drove him out of work and ended him in a job as an assistant in a secondhand bookshop in Hampstead. After the Spanish Civil War started, Orwell volunteered to fight with the Republicans against Franco’s Nationalist uprising. Orwell later joined the non-Stalinist far-left Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification, or POUM, and for this party Orwell fought as an infantryman. Later in the war, Orwell and his wife Eileen had to leave Spain after almost being arrested by the communists as they moved into suppress the POUM in 1937. After moving away from Spain, Orwell became a book reviewer for the New England Weekly until 1940. During World War II, Orwell was a member of the Home Guard, and later worked for BBC Eastern Service, working for programs to gain support from Indian and East Asian countries. Orwell resigned from this position in 1943 because of his dislike for shaping propaganda. After resigning, Orwell became a literary editor of Tribune where he contributed to a column called “As I Please.” Later in 1944, Orwell wrote his famous novel “Animal Farm,” which created both critical and successful reviews. Sometime between 1936 and 1945 Orwell married Eileen O’Shaughnessy and adopted a son named Richard. Eileen later died in 1945 during an operation. Orwell then goes on to write “Nineteen Eighty-Four” during his stay on the island of Jura in 1949, which ended up being Orwell’s best work. Orwell later died on the 21st on January in 1950, shortly after marrying Sonia Brownell, from tuberculosis. During his life Orwell wrote many world known works like “Animal Farm,” “Politics and the English Language,” “1984,” and “Shooting an Elephant” (Biography of George Orwell).

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            “Shooting an Elephant” is an essay written by Orwell in 1936. In this story Orwell is stationed in a town in Moulmein called Burma, which as under British rule. Here, Orwell worked a sub-divisional police officer, which caused him to be hated by many people who inhabited the village. Orwell hated his job in the police force because he worked for the British Empire, which he did not agree with how they treated the Burmese people, and because the people who lived in the village did not like Orwell, which caused inner conflict because Orwell did not agree with the British Empire, but he represented them, which made the villagers hate him. One day in the village a domesticated elephant escaped and was going crazy throughout the village. The elephant destroyed property, while the owner of the elephant was twelve hours away from looking for the elephant in the wrong direction. Later, Orwell finds a man killed by the elephant in the mud and orders to obtain a gun, so he could shoot the elephant if needed. By the time Orwell finds the elephant, a large group from the village has followed him and expect Orwell to shoot the elephant. This makes Orwell uncomfortable because he did not plan to shoot the elephant. The elephant at this point is eating grass peacefully in the field and Orwell notices he should not shoot the elephant, but the overwhelming presence of the villagers, who expect the elephant to be shot or Orwell will be laughed about, causes Orwell to shoot the elephant. When Orwell shoots the elephant, the villagers get excited, and the elephant falls to its knees but does not die. After Orwell shoots the elephant three times, the elephant finally falls to the ground, where he continues to breathe. Orwell notices the elephant is in agony and describes the elephant as “powerless to move and yet powerless to die.” Orwell eventually leaves the scene because he can not stand to watch the elephant die, and after the villagers strip the elephant of its meat off its bones. When the elephant’s owner came back he was angry, but Orwell was legally justified since the elephant killed a villager (Orwell).

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            “Animal Farm” was published in 1945 and tells the story about how farm animals rebel against their farmer and take over the farm. The animals believe that this will lead them to a better life by living with out control by humans. The animals come together and make a set of seven rules, the most important one being the last one: “All animals are equal.” This later gets changed to “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” As the novel goes on, the animals are doing fine maintain life equally, by doing equal work and receiving equal benefits.  After time goes by we can see that the pigs on the farm are being treated with higher respect and receive more benefits than the rest of the animals on the farm. At the end of the novel the pigs and humans are working together, and the laboring animals can no longer tell which ones are the pigs and which ones are the humans. Orwell wrote this novel after being in the Spanish Civil War and how revolution evolved in Russia and then the Soviet Union. “Animal Farm” was wrote to accomplish a more political aim, which was to represent Stalin and the Soviet Union. This book shows through the animals in the book the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then to the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell was not too fond of Stalin, who he believed to be a cruel dictator. “Animals Farm” shows how Orwell really felt about the situation, but instead of being said out loud, being written into a creative, artistic, and political masterpiece.

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            “1984” was published in 1949 and portrays a society and which Orwell can not stand, just like he portrayed in “Animal Farm.” “1984” is what Orwell believed the way of life would be after the Second World War. The way Orwell makes the society seem is to be related to the Soviet Union during his time. Orwell writes this novel as more of a warning for people that one day our society might end up as condemned as the people in the Soviet Union used to be. In “1984” we follow along the character Winston Smith as he lives in Oceania. In Oceania, the higher government scrutinizes the human activities with Big Brother. Winston express his thoughts into a diary so Big Brother could not watch his actions. Eventually, Winston falls into opposition and must reform the nonconformist. Orwell’s novel “1984” brought the slogan for life without freedom: “Big Brother is Watching You.” This shows how the society let their people live but always under strict control and no matter what they did, someone was always watching them to make sure they did not do anything they were not supposed to do.

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            “Politics and the English Language” shows Orwell’s belief that the English language is in decline due to the state of society and politics. Orwell argues that the English language is becoming inaccurate due to the foolish thoughts of the human mind, but we also are likely to have foolish thoughts. Orwell also describes meaningless words, diction, and the connection between politics and the decline of the English language. This decline of language follows Orwell’s constant theme of a government and society that he does not agree with, like in his other works (Politics and the English Language).

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            George Orwell is one of the most influential writers of our time, and even though his novels and papers were written around sixty-five years ago, we can still see how his writings compare to our society today. In Orwell’s final days on this planet he gave us a warning podcasted on BBC called “The Final Warning.” Here, Orwell gives a warning about how our society will be if we do not change out ways and how we will end up like his famous novel “1984.” Orwell hopes that his final warning to the public will encourage us to change our ways, so our society is not in the decline and our government does not have too much control over us. We should be following Orwell’s warning to make sure we do not end up like the society of Oceania in “1984.”