Rhetorical Analysis of “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

This essay analyzes George Orwell's “Shooting an Elephant” and its metaphorical representation of British imperialism in Lower Burma. The author appeals to readers through personal experience, definition, and personification, using Pathos to evoke emotions and reach a wider audience.

Nataliya Dzyadyk
Stacie Hankinson
English 120-8049
29 August 2024
Rhetorical Analysis of “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell
“Shooting an Elephant”, is an essay published in the literary magazine New Writing in 1936
and composed by famous English writer George Orwell, who was recognized for his farseeing
literary work. He brought an issue of an oppressive imperial power of British imperialism in
Lower Burma (colonized by Great Britain during 1823-1886) where he represented it as a sub-
divisional police officer of the town, Moulmein. The whole essay, in essence, is a metaphor the
author alluded to promote his stance on the dooming outcome of imperialism; it is bad and
destructive for both: conquerors and conquered. It is a mutually inhibiting process of civilization
development. And prediction of Orwell came true; in our days - 82 years later - colonies are no
more. This short literary piece’s style was very typical of many others done by the author during
his life.
Orwell supported his argument by the main story of how the police officer was trapped
between his own outrage and indignation toward the British Empire and Burmese people’s
resentment toward him. Orwell used three strategies to appeal to the readers.
First, author included exemplification of personal experience; how he was indirectly forced
to shoot the elephant against his will, just to save his face: ”I did not want to shoot the elephant”;
he goes further: “a white man mustn’t be frightened in front of natives”. The narrator claimed: “I

was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind”. The use
of such example illuminated the argument and made a more substantial appeal to the readers.
The second strategy is that Orwell used the definition “shoot an elephant – it is comparable to
destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery”. That made a clear and distinct point to the
readers he did not want to kill an elephant.
The third strategy consisted of Orwell used personification in the description of an elephant by
attributing to the animal human characteristics, such as when he described
the elephant playing with the grass with “preoccupied grandmotherly air”. And calling the
shooting the pachyderm a murder, the verb only applied to humans. His evident and consistent
use of Pathos was a clear effort to reach the audience. In order to fully grasp the narrative, one
must assume to what kind of audience it was intended. Knowing George Orwell literature
repertoire, it can be guessed that the author tried to appeal to the widest set of populace in the
British Empire, and tried to make his voice to be heard. The simple language used in the essay
undoubtedly was clear to any Englishman who laid his or her sight on it. Author hinted to his
countrymen the language which the majority could understand or associate with.
While George Orwell’s protagonist in his “Shooting the Elephant” (using collections of
metaphors, figurative language) did not experience the direct effect of discrimination, he is still
stereotyped as a “white man”- strong tyrant/ruler from the British Empire; a Sahib, who was
spending his life "trying to impress the natives." And he is trying to fulfill the expectation of the
"natives" by killing the elephant, who was no longer posing any threat to the people or to the
property. So he was trying to “fit” the stereotype not to disapprove it, becoming in essence a
captive of it, thereby partially revealing the other-opposite, implicit “side of the medal” of the
perceived colonial power glory.

Substantial use of Pathos was mentioned through the essay, to evoke reader's emotions; for
example, when Orwell equated the elephant to a "very expensive piece of machinery", more
important than "Cooley", a common worker. Author described his experience during 1920s as a
young provisional British police officer in Colonial India (former Burma, this country no longer
exists). The subject strongly insinuated to the element of race discrimination and stereotyping of
Englishmen in the colonies against locals (Indians), proliferated in those distant times, when he
said that he was glad that the elephant killed a "Cooley" thereby justifying his actions (fellow
young police officers say-that it was not a fair "trade" elephant is much more important) or
calling native people "yellow faces" on more than one occasion.
Orwell summarized by giving an abstract example of his confined “freedom” as English in
Burma in the last sentence of the essay, about killing the elephant, by asking himself with a bit of
irony: “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid
looking a fool.”

Work Cited
George Orwell. Shooting an Elephant.
New Writing. 1936. Print