Blog On Orwell. Or A Lesson In A Beauty.

Blog On Orwell. Or A Lesson In A Beauty. (PROFESSOR BREWER: I READ BOTH PIECES, and ENDEAVORED TO COMMENT ON "SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT" USING ORWELL's GUIDELINES AS DESCRIBED ON PAGE 92 OF "POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE")

As an author, Orwell was simplistic. I scrutinized his style and hoped to find something out of the ordinary: nothing came. But, on the contrary, perhaps the fact that Orwell navigates without a 'superfluity' in style is a style, in and of itself. He was, after all, one of the twentieth century's keystone authors.

But maybe he attained his title for other reasons. As an author, Orwell would elucidate elusive points for his audiences, maneuvering political and social impasses with ease. As the imperialist "elephant" slaughterer, he paralleled every Englishman at that time, squeezed betwixt the grip of the Queen and the glares of the natives, wherever they may be.

Why didn't he slaughter a tiger, or some predator? Why did Orwell's story deem him to attack a useful and "costly piece of machinery?" (81) If it had been a predator, then Orwell would have been useful and a grace to the Burmese natives. But that wasn't what Orwell attempted to say: He sent for the rifle initially, only to "defend [himself] - if necessary" (81). The elephant wasn't a 'threat,' either. Though he was influenced by a state of "must," the elephant, at the time that Orwell chose to shoot him, was passive, or "took no notice if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him" (82).

Therefore, as I propose to you, perhaps Orwell was writing to truly espouse once again the inherent damage of his presence as an 'imperialist'. The underlying protest against the "dirty work of [the] Empire" (79) was modeled by Orwell's choice, as an author, to force Orwell, the narrator, to shoot a working Burmese elephant. The author's choice was conscious and deliberate, and suggesting that the Empire was intervening incorrectly outside of its jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, there is evidence suggesting Orwell wrote not for the above reason, but rather to outline another side of his dilemma: the Indians' reciprocal and reactive psychological pressure. As the piece began, the narrator Orwell waged an internal war, battling the Indians' devilish, antagonistic ways and "sneering yellow faces of young men" (79). Likewise, leading up to the point of noticing the crowd (bottom of 81) he was a rational actor, resolute in his decision in opting "not to shoot [the elephant]" (81).

Afterwards however, in the aside seemingly interspersed throughout the next page , Orwell discloses the truism that "every white man's life in the East was one long struggle" (82). This is elemental. His life was a battle, and after noticing the immensity of the crowd, had to "act like a sahib… resolute [and] knowing his own mind" (82). But only if Orwell, the narrator, could know his own mind, then perhaps the elephant, wouldn't have died "very slowly and in great agony" (83).

For my own bewilderment, I pose this question to you: Does this jostle the mind of another author we have read? Is not Orwell reminiscent of Conrad?