Orwell begins his autobiographical short story by telling how he is serving as an officer in the British-held Burma. He confesses his feelings of hatred toward the British imperialism and its ideals and his sympathy for the Burmese locals, but also how he despises every local who jeers and mocks him. Orwell feels strongly against both sides and fails to fully commit the entirety of his mind behind any decision regarding the fate of the escaped elephant in this tale. This struggle between Orwell’s logic and reason versus the social pressure and sympathy he feels from the ever-growing herd of locals is the main axis that all of the conflict in this account revolves around.
“I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing” (1) Orwell confesses when introducing his temperament regarding his job and the different factions that he must engage with. On the one hand he loathed the British rule, yet in the same breath he can say that he thinks “the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts,” (1). Orwell’s bipartisan mind is put to the test when he is called but another officer across town calls him about an escaped elephant who had already caused much destruction; killed a cow, raided fruit stalls, destroyed a hut, overturned a trash van, and killed a local man (1-2). Upon leaving his office, Orwell brings his .44 Winchester rifle with him, but he knows it will not kill the elephant and has no plans to kill the elephant and doesn’t plan to for most of his journey to find the elephant. He only plans to use the noise to scare it (1).
Once he found the dead “coolie” Orwell sends an orderly to fetch the larger rifle, but only if he needed to defend himself (2) and he still had no intent of killing the elephant. When the locals saw sight of the rifle, a commotion immediately began to stir, and Orwell was aware of this and immediately felt pressure from the Burmese to shoot the elephant. He was aware of the crowd’s...