Shooting an Elephant

In the story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, the main character had gone threw a big change throughout the story. The changes that he had encountered may have not been intentional, but peer pressure has its way of influencing people to do things they don’t want to do. In this story a tamed elephant turns for the worse and the main character is called into take care of the problem.

The main character in this story starts off with a very different mindset then when he ends the story. At the beginning of “Shooting an Elephant” the main character, a police officer, gets a call to take care of an elephant that is running wild. He goes to where the elephant is with the mind set that he was just going to scare the elephant. The first sentence of this story is a very powerful quote. The quote “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people,” sets a setting on how this story is going to be. This quote shows that what ever this police officer does he will not be liked by the locals. This is most likely because of the fact that he is in an anti-European place. As this man reaches the village and sees what the beast has done he becomes a little bit more frightened. The quote “A white man mustn’t be frightened in from of natives.” Shows that the main character is a bit frightened of the elephant but knows that he must not let the natives aware of his fear. He is most likely scared because of the fact that the elephant had trampled and killed a native. In the beginning of this story the main character goes into the village as if he wanted to just scare the elephant but by time he reaches the village his mind set has changed.

As the story continues on the main character in “Shooting an Elephant” changes drastically. As he sees more and more destruction, he sends a local to get a friends elephant rifle. He does this because the gun that he had brought is not powerful enough to kill an elephant. This point is where the character changes, possibly for the worst. When he gets the rifle he goes and searches for the beast. One of the locals tells him that the elephant is down in the rice patty. The quote “They had seen the rifle and where all shouting excitedly that I was going to kill the elephant.” Shows how the locals are trying to make the officer think that he should kill