George orwell shooting an elephant

1936 essay by George Orwell

"Shooting an Elephant" is an essay by British writer George Orwell, first published in the literary magazine New Writing in late 1936 and broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 12 October 1948.

The essay describes the experience of the English narrator, possibly Orwell himself, called upon to shoot an aggressiveelephant while working as a police officer in Burma. Because the locals expect him to do the job, he does so against his better judgment, his anguish increased by the elephant's slow and painful death.

The story is regarded as a metaphor for colonialism as a whole, and for Orwell's view that "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys".^[2]

Orwell spent some of his