Shooting an Elephant

1.) Revealed in the essay, Shooting an Elephant, are two differing themes. These two themes seem to be opposites as well, as one theme expresses interest and the other expresses disinterest in the military work of George Orwell. From the beginning, the reader can see that Orwell disliked his military service, when he makes such claims that, "I was hated by large numbers of people,"(Orwell 221) or "...imperialism was an evil thing"(Orwell 221). Shortly after making such claims, Orwell continues on by saying that "One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening"(Orwell 222). From there, he goes on to say that when he was about to shoot the elephant, "I did not know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole"(Orwell 225). In that, Orwell is stating that the Burmese people around him, of whom hated him, took a sudden interest in him, since he was possibly preparing their next meal.
Those themes are very different, but are intertwined quite effectively. Orwell is not much for military service, as one can see based on how he starts this essay. Yet, Orwell feels obliged to tell of his best memory from the war. Though it is portrayed in a positive light, the negative view lingers. He described the shooting of an elephant to be the one time that the people took interest in him, but following that, he described that the elephant was stripped to the bones of its meat after it was killed. While the people gave him a break that one time, it was only because Orwell was about to prepare their next meal. If elephants were poisonous, chances are that the people would have been indifferent to the spectacle. That is how the two themes of interest and disinterest are integrated in the essay, Shooting an Elephant.

2.) Orwell reveals a handful of unflattering aspects of himself. He does this uniformly, by first explaining how he felt about the situation, and secondly explaining what was legal or should have been done. At one time, Orwell says that, "But I did not want to shoot the elephant... Alive, the elephant is worth as least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly"(Orwell 225). Later on, Orwell states that, "Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it"(Orwell 227). That is generally how Orwell revealed blunders in his character throughout this essay.