To Shoot or not to Shoot

Since the dawn of time, the struggle for power has been the thriving force of human civilization. This struggle for power became the reason for the phenomenon of colonization which spanned almost five hundred years and left a mark on human history; a stain that can never be wiped off. The Europeans, in that time, did everything in their power to bring civilizations under their control, to take from others what they had no right to take, to make their opinion fact, through coercion or persuasion, through war and religion. But over time, as religion started to drift people apart, Literature became a tool for controlling and civilizing the working classes and in this way preventing rebellion (Eagleton, 1997: 36-39). In the Post-Colonial era, many literary novels and short stories were written, which represented cultures and societies in different ways from different perspectives. One such story is ‘Shooting an Elephant’ by George Orwell, which looks at the evils of colonialism through the representation of the colonists and the colonized, and the influence one has on the other.

Based on Orwell’s own personal experience_, ‘Shooting an Elephant’ follows the story of an English police officer called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant that was ravaging a Burmese town (Orwell, 1936). The elephant, which had gone ‘musth,’ a state characterized by extra testosterone secretion and contentious behavior, had killed an Indian coolie and as such, was uncontrollable and had to be stopped, with force if necessary, and the narrator, being a police officer, was asked to do the deed. As the narrator gets close to the elephant, followed by over two thousand native people, he contemplates leaving the animal alone, for it had seemed to calm down. However, with two thousand pairs of eyes peering at him, he felt pressured by the crowd to kill the elephant. Eventually, against his better judgment, the narrator shoots the elephant multiple times to avoid ‘looking the fool,’ and in the process crippling it but unable to kill it. The narrator then leaves the beast, unable to be in its presence as it continues to suffer and eventually die (Orwell, 1936).  While it might seem like a simple story, ‘Shooting an elephant’ brings to light the evil that is colonialism. Unlike Chinua Achebe who wrote about colonialism from the African point of view, Orwell, like Joseph Conrad in ‘Heart of Darkness,’ presents the moral dilemmas of the colonist.

An important aspect that brings out the evils of colonialism is the representation of the ‘White Man’ in the story. The British, who used force to take control of the Burmese people, are shown to be in charge, thereby reducing the Burmese people to an inferior status in their own country. They are represented by literacy. They are shown to be powerful people, whose job is to educate the natives. The superiority of the ‘White Man’ is evident in the fact that when the narrator shoots the elephant, one of the younger British men was heard to say that it was a ‘damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie (Orwell, 1936).’ The elephant in the story can be seen to represent the ‘stricken, shrunken; immensely old’ country of Burma, which, once powerful and great, has now been reduced to ‘senility’ by the bullets that came with colonialism, at the hands of the White Man. The narrator, by shooting the elephant, offers insight into the hollowness of colonialism, as he falls prey to imperialistic ethos.

As any coin has two sides, so too does the coin that is colonialism have two sides, the latter being the representation of the colonized-in this case the Burmese. The narrator, whether by accident or intent, introduces the concept of binary opposites. Where the British were shown to be civilized and superior, the natives are shown to be savage, barbaric ‘sneering yellow faces’ who seemed to have nothing to do ‘except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans (Orwell, 1936).’ Further on in the story, the narrator refers to the natives as ‘evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.’ The natives apparently spit at women, jeer at the police officers, and this builds up an unpleasant image of the people of Burma (Alam, 2006). This makes the Burmese a very repugnant set of characters for whom the readers get an immediate distaste, even though they are the ones being looked down on.

However, what is most interesting in Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’ is perhaps not the influence, coercive or otherwise, that the British have on the Burmese but rather, the influence that the colonized people have on the colonizers. The narrator introduces us to that idea of humiliation, of how the colonists will do whatever it takes to avoid ‘looking the fool.’ As the narrator gets closer to the elephant, he is presented with Hamlet’s dilemma of ‘To shoot or not to shoot.’ According to him, ‘every white man’s life in the east was one long struggle not to be laughed at,’ and it was for this reason that he shot the elephant even though he did not want to. He simply wanted to appease the native people. This presents the dichotomy of the ‘real self’ vs. the public image of one’s self. The narrator has to decide whether to do what he wants or what will get people to like him, and he chooses the latter. The fact that the Burmese can decide what the narrator, a white man must do, creates the irony of master becoming slave to ‘fulfill his racial and imperial obligations (Rezaul Karim, 1999).’ This can be seen to show how when imperialists colonize a country, they restrict the freedom of the natives and in so doing, unwittingly limit their own freedom in that they tend to avoid courses of action that could provoke the wrath of the native people. The narrator, at one point in the story, has an epiphany. He realizes that ‘when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys,’ and this goes on to show how the powerful can become powerless in the right circumstances (Orwell, 1936). In the end we see that to gain power does not necessarily mean gaining control.

We can see, then, how the postcolonial era brought about works of literature influenced by the European representations of themselves and the Orient. Where the White Man is represented by civility and literacy, the Orient is represented by savagery and imbecility. And yet, even in all this, we see how sometimes the ones in power are the ones in doubt. Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’ is just one example of this; one example from a long list of works depicting the world from a Eurocentric point of view. Francis Bacon once wrote, ‘Knowledge is power.’ Indeed, the Europeans used their knowledge to exert power over other cultures and people. Of all the wars that they won, the war of culture was the most defining, for it allowed them to depict things as they wanted to. It allowed them to give meanings to things as they wished. And it allowed them, most of all, to take advantage of those who simply came from a different place.