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Metaphors
Definition of Mood
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes... read full definition
Mood
Explanation and Analysis:
The mood of “Shooting an Elephant” is primarily tense and angry. The story opens on a tense note as Orwell—who is both narrator and protagonist—explains how trapped he feels as a white British police officer who resents the British Empire’s treatment of its colonial populations, while also resenting the local Burmese population for treating him badly given his position as a colonial officer.
The tension increases as Orwell learns that an elephant has freed itself from captivity in a nearby town and he is assigned to find the elephant and constrain it once more. This does not go as planned, of course, and Orwell arrives at the scene after a local man has been trampled to death by the rampaging elephant.
The tension of the story increases as 2,000 people gather around, expecting Orwell to shoot and kill the elephant who has killed this man. After Orwell has a grand insight into the nature of colonialism—that it traps him in a scripted role as a colonizer as much as it traps the Burmese people in a scripted role as the colonized—the mood shifts slightly. Suddenly Orwell is able to see the elephant’s pain and writes of the elephant’s belabored death with a much gentler tone. The story ultimately ends in an unsettled place as Orwell debriefs the experience with other White colonial officers and concludes that they cannot understand the situation in the same way he does (given their racist and dehumanizing views of the local Burmese people).
Related Themes:
