Shooting an Elephant
...d do the best they can to make him feel uncomfortable. Orwell is, therefore, abandoned from either side. He cannot only identify himself as a supporter of the British imperialism or a sympathizer of the Burmese people, but he also faces conflicts and attacks from either side, putting him in a dilemma he has to deal with for the entire five years. As Orwell tells the story about his shooting of the elephant, he traces down this conflict, this dilemma (that he has to act and do, what he does not want to do) to a more concrete, personal and "local" matter. During his report he points out, that he has no intention to shoot the elephant right from the beginning ("As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him"). He decides not to shoot the elephant on the basis of his logical and rational reasoning, for why would you murderer a strong, powerful and high valuable life-form if it can been possibly avoided? The decision he has made was perfectly logical to him, but as he turns around and sees all these faces of the Burmese people observing him and expecting him to kill the elephant, his decision becomes instable and, suddenly, questionable. He again is being pushed into a dilemma, in which he has to act and do something, which he does not want to do in the first place. The Burmese people expect him to shoot the elephant, and Orwell finally sees no other choice than killing the elephant, in order to show confidence, to show no anxiety and impress the "natives" (to act his role as a British policemen) and in order not to look like a fool. He is being pulled to this decision so strong, that he states that he feels happy to have an Indian coolie murdered by the elephant before, in order for him to have legal right to kill the animal. In other words, his emotional and irrational urge is so strong, that he still might have killed the elephant, even if it has not killed the coolie. So Orwell describes on both levels to the readers situations, in which you sometimes have to act a way you do not want to act. By referring these dilemmas to the image of a seemingly self-moving puppet, which in reality does not have his own mind, he criticizes his position and his government's political structure: If a white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. As you can see, such a struggle often occurs in combination with a position held. This can be a leadership position (don't act afraid, even if you are), a representative position (speak out things your voters want to hear, not the one you want to do) or just your position held at your working place. I, personally, faced a similar incident as Orwell's one. I was class president back in high school, and as a class president one of my duties is to support all the students in my class, and to represent them in conventions held at school. And there was teacher at my school (not liked by most of the students on account of his counterproductive way of teaching), who had a continuous problem with a student and her attitude in school, which finally ended up having her crying and runn...