Posted by Tim Cratchit on August 23, 2001 at 20:46:45:
In Reply to: Shooting an Elephant posted by KJ on August 22, 2001 at 23:05:28:
KJ,
It is hard to get a complex stuff into one line. [There is one circle of Inferno reserved for teachers that insist on asking: 'what meaning is expressed in these veses?']
So, Orwell's had strong distaste for his colonial police job. He did not want to shoot the elephant, he thought of the schooting as a barbaric and (perhaps) needles act, but he decided to use the shotgun rather then lose his face. He was a sahib and this was the thing the sahibs must do. He hated the natives for hating him and making his life so miserable, he did not want to do a spectacle for them, yet he definitely did not want them to be able to laugh at him. He very much hated the system for puting him there in this role.
So, it is a fairly absurd story about one unplesant (and somewhat inhumane) experience the young Blair had during his long and *as one gathers* boring police service in Burma. It is also a story about the nature of the colonial rule.
Read the "Hanging" from this internet page: it is funny (and brief, too). The subject is the same: how the colonial officers and their native 'subjects' behave in one absurd scene.