Shooting an Elephant (1936)(orwellfoundation.com)
orwellfoundation.com
Shooting an Elephant (1936)
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/
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There is a similar story involving an Elephant in the Swiss town of Murten in 1866 - also assumed to have been in musth and shot by a cannon.
https://second.wiki/wiki/elefant_von_murten
https://second.wiki/wiki/elefant_von_murten
The skeleton of which is now standing in the natural history museum of Bern, Switzerland ;)
It’s meat was ‚converted‘ into Gulasch soup for the people of Murten…
Posted this as Orwell is one of my favorite essayists (along with Gore Vidal). It's rare to see a free work like this, and it's a great essay.
Thanks for the reminder, I haven't read this in years! It's the first piece of writing of his that opened my eyes beyond 1984. If people are looking for other mildly humorous but still serious in the same vein, I would recommend "Down and Out in Paris and London."
His novel Burmese Days is similarly based on his experiences of this time.
Down and Out is my favorite book. His essays were so much better than his fiction, IMO.
PSA: The best one volume collection of Orwell's essays is an excellent hardcover edition Essays published by Everyman's Library well worth reading and having.
This really reminded me of Impro by Johnstone, especially his thoughts about status.
Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it.
Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it.
An elephant the soize of a tangerine. The Burmans had been throwing them away.
It’s interesting the writing style isn’t too far off from today’s writing style. My first instincts would guess the year written was false or it was purposely written in such a way to try to convince us it’s older than it really is.
There has been remarkably little English linguistic drift since the widespread adoption of the printing press.
I agree. Trying to read some Tarzan books that were translated to my local language in the 1980's now is an atrocity. But reading the English version is still pretty decent, and that is now older than 100 years (the language itself is still fine, but terms relating to natives and the ideology of the superior white man can get to be a bit over the top).
I don't know how common it is, but a lot of the English writing I've seen from years gone by was written using extremely long continuous sentences.[1][2] I find it hard to parse some of it, because of having to mentally maintain so much "sentence state".
For example, from Robinson Crusoe:
"He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind."
Orwell's style is much more well-ordered and understandable, IMO. Maybe the GP is referring to something like that?
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/521/pg521-images.html
[2] https://archive.org/details/lettersfromegypt0000nigh
For example, from Robinson Crusoe:
"He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind."
Orwell's style is much more well-ordered and understandable, IMO. Maybe the GP is referring to something like that?
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/521/pg521-images.html
[2] https://archive.org/details/lettersfromegypt0000nigh
What on earth are you expecting it to look like? Bizarre paranoia to assume it's a forgery.
Are you surprised? This piece was written about 80 years ago; my grandmother was alive back then, and I've met plenty of other people who were too. It's not that long ago.
Everyone should read Animal Farm and 1984. I read the family copy of Animal Farm 8th grade summer, and we regularly quoted Animal Farm back and forth growing up. I later read Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margerita and enjoyed it but when I had a Russian girlfriend she explained that I didn't understand it at all. It was the Russian Animal Farm but you really had to know Russian history to understand the allegories.
I read Down and Out my first year of college. What stuck with me was his idea that it is very expensive to be poor.
I read Shooting an Elephant for an English class. It's hard not to think of the pointlessness of the Great Game when thinking about Afghanistan.
Politics and the English Language, Notes on Nationalism, ...
Orwell was a great writer. Hitchens wanted to be Orwell. Hitchens was good but, nope, not Orwell. Hitchens was unbelievably wrongly wrong about Iraq and would never admit it. He should have re-read Shooting an Elephant very slowly, very carefully, with a long suffering English lecturer patiently getting its point across. It'd help if he'd actually lived there instead of just wearing a Kurdish pin.
I read Down and Out my first year of college. What stuck with me was his idea that it is very expensive to be poor.
I read Shooting an Elephant for an English class. It's hard not to think of the pointlessness of the Great Game when thinking about Afghanistan.
Politics and the English Language, Notes on Nationalism, ...
Orwell was a great writer. Hitchens wanted to be Orwell. Hitchens was good but, nope, not Orwell. Hitchens was unbelievably wrongly wrong about Iraq and would never admit it. He should have re-read Shooting an Elephant very slowly, very carefully, with a long suffering English lecturer patiently getting its point across. It'd help if he'd actually lived there instead of just wearing a Kurdish pin.
> Hitchens was unbelievably wrongly wrong about Iraq and would never admit it
This absolutely disintegrated the UK left, especially the more "modern liberal" end, because they'd got on board the idea of gunpoint liberation of post-colonial countries run by strongmen and/or Islamists. When this turned out to be a disaster, there was nowhere ideologically to go that didn't involve admitting error.
Like Orwell, they came to Iraq with no choice other than to shoot the elephant.
This absolutely disintegrated the UK left, especially the more "modern liberal" end, because they'd got on board the idea of gunpoint liberation of post-colonial countries run by strongmen and/or Islamists. When this turned out to be a disaster, there was nowhere ideologically to go that didn't involve admitting error.
Like Orwell, they came to Iraq with no choice other than to shoot the elephant.
Yes, but Orwell having shot the elephant understood the pointlessness of it, understood that the Great Game was being played back on the West. Hitchens never got that, or never admitted to getting that.
Homage to Catalonia Is another great book I’d add to your review list. His description of trench warfare and if bayonetting someone is one of the more horrible things I’ve read.
Thanks, I did read Homage to Catalonia. I read A Farewell to Arms at about the same time. I think my Orange County high school education had Ronald Reagan winning WWII and that was pretty much it. They didn't teach the Depression and they sure didn't teach the Spanish Civil War as a prelude to WWII.
I loved Down and Out, great to see you reference it! I did dishes at a restaurant gig in a foreign country once: talk about a character building expertise!
Interesting, why do you think Hitchens wanted to be Orwell? [I know he was a huge admirer, but he also seemed he lived quite a different life with different kinds of output.]
He shot the elephant to avoid looking a fool to the natives. It took a long time to kill the elephant as well.
I feel sorry for the elephant. I feel sorry for the author. I feel sorry for the victims. No winners, just losers. And in the between there is doing the expected contradicting our own standards, not chosing to do right, nor do any wrong - but doing nothing and accepting the narrative before it has even played out.
The elephant was sick with musk and trampled a native. The natives demanded the law/police kill the elephant. When he got to the elephant the musk was done and the elephant was well again.
It is not about what is right or wrong, it is what the majority want. Right now in the USA we have cancel culture using social media to get people fired from their jobs for mistakes they make. Sort of like the natives that wanted the elephant killed.
The majority rule in politics in the USA and determine who gets elected. The average person has an IQ of 100, and half are dumber than that. It is easier to fool them than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.
Life is suffering according to Buddhism, we all suffer in some way shape or form.
It is not about what is right or wrong, it is what the majority want. Right now in the USA we have cancel culture using social media to get people fired from their jobs for mistakes they make. Sort of like the natives that wanted the elephant killed.
The majority rule in politics in the USA and determine who gets elected. The average person has an IQ of 100, and half are dumber than that. It is easier to fool them than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.
Life is suffering according to Buddhism, we all suffer in some way shape or form.
Maybe I’m lacking empathy, but I don’t feel that sorry. It was an unfortunate situation, but so is it when a Ranger needs to shoot a wild bear that’s been going through trash cans. In fact, usually the villain in the story is the person leaving unsecured trash around where wild animals can get at it. Similarly, the (native) people were clearly in the wrong for chaining down and abusing a wild animal, something that could have been made worse by the British but was probably going on long before the British showed up.
The narrator strikes me as someone who has confidence issues and then rationalizes it by blaming it on colonialism or social pressure or whatever. He made the decision to kill a living thing, particularly in a poor way that caused the animal to suffer. If he made a mistake the honorable way to handle it is to admit it and take complete responsibility, not come up with excuses that retroactively frame it as some sort of philosophical dilemma.
The narrator strikes me as someone who has confidence issues and then rationalizes it by blaming it on colonialism or social pressure or whatever. He made the decision to kill a living thing, particularly in a poor way that caused the animal to suffer. If he made a mistake the honorable way to handle it is to admit it and take complete responsibility, not come up with excuses that retroactively frame it as some sort of philosophical dilemma.
Sometimes we have to share the blame.
In India they used elephants as bulldozers and tanks. Really abuse the elephants. It is a part of their culture.
Events out of their control let an elephant get sick and go on a rampage, trample some natives, and be shot to death as a result. Everyone was a little bit wrong and culture had a little bit to do with it.
We have the same problem with racism in the USA, it was a part of US culture to use black people as slaves, something that is wrong now and considered evil. Police officers killing black men lead to black lives matter and riots in cities. This is wrong on so many levels, and a BLM org is needed to make sure it stops happening. Meanwhile the average white person isn't racist the KKK and Nazi white people are racist and evil. The problem is that many white people lack empathy for the killed black men, and just accept it as collateral damage.
It is a teaching concept in that story, as well as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984, etc. that get banned in schools because they offend people. The whole concept of the book is to offend so people will learn a lesion in why racism and tyranny are evil and we should not allow them to happen.
In India they used elephants as bulldozers and tanks. Really abuse the elephants. It is a part of their culture.
Events out of their control let an elephant get sick and go on a rampage, trample some natives, and be shot to death as a result. Everyone was a little bit wrong and culture had a little bit to do with it.
We have the same problem with racism in the USA, it was a part of US culture to use black people as slaves, something that is wrong now and considered evil. Police officers killing black men lead to black lives matter and riots in cities. This is wrong on so many levels, and a BLM org is needed to make sure it stops happening. Meanwhile the average white person isn't racist the KKK and Nazi white people are racist and evil. The problem is that many white people lack empathy for the killed black men, and just accept it as collateral damage.
It is a teaching concept in that story, as well as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984, etc. that get banned in schools because they offend people. The whole concept of the book is to offend so people will learn a lesion in why racism and tyranny are evil and we should not allow them to happen.
bell-cot(11)
> And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.
Side note: I didn't know about Elephants and "Musth", so I looked it up:
Musth or must (/ˈmʌst/; Urdu: مست, from Persian, lit. 'intoxicated') is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants characterized by highly aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones.
Speaking of Elephants, I recommend a very interesting story about an Elephant named Jacopo in Venezia, Italy, ~200 years ago [0]. In that case, it was shot with a cannon, given that Venetians weren't exactly used to deal with Elephants in the city.
[0]: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/curious-stories-of-venice/