“Shooting an Elephant” Summary & Analysis

George Orwell works as the sub-divisional police officer of Moulmein, a town in the British colony of Burma. Because he is, like the rest of the English, a military occupier, he is hated by much of the village. Though the Burmese never stage a full revolt, they express their disgust by harassing Europeans at every opportunity. Burmese trip Orwell during soccer games and hurl insults at him as he walks down the street. The young Buddhist priests torment him the most.

The abuse he suffers from Burmese confuses Orwell, because he is “theoretically—and secretly” on their side, and opposed to the oppressive British empire he serves. His work handling wretched prisoners gives him a close-up view of “the dirty work of Europe” and makes him feel guilty for his role in colonialism. He has yet to understand that the British empire is waning, and will soon be replaced with even worse regimes. However, while Orwell considers the empire an unconscionable tyranny, he still hates the insolent Burmese who torment him. This conflicted mindset is typical of officers in the British Raj, he explains.

One day, a minor incident takes places that gives Orwell insight into the true nature of imperialism and the reasons behind it. He receives a call from another policeman, informing him that a rogue elephant has been causing damage in the town. Orwell heads toward the affected area. On the way, locals explain that the elephant is not wild, but rather a domesticated one that has had an attack of “must.” “Must” occurs when tame elephants, held in chains, break their restraints and go berserk. The Burmese have been unable to restrain the elephant. Its “mahout,” or handler, pursued it in the wrong direction and is now twelve hours away. On its rampage, the elephant has destroyed public and private property and killed livestock.

Orwell goes to the neighborhood where the elephant was last spotted, which is one of the town’s poorer districts. He tries to figure out the state of affairs, but, as is common in his experience of Asia, he finds that the story makes less and less sense the more he learns about it. The neighborhood’s inhabitants give such conflicting reports that Orwell nearly concludes that the whole story was a hoax. Suddenly, he hears a commotion nearby and rounds a corner to find a “coolie”—a laborer—lying dead in the mud, crushed and skinned alive by the rogue elephant. The mutilated corpse appears to have been in excruciating pain. Orwell orders a subordinate to bring him a gun strong enough to shoot an elephant.

Orwell’s subordinate returns with the gun, and locals reveal that the elephant is in a nearby rice paddy. Orwell walks to the field, and a large group from the neighborhood follows him. The townspeople, who were previously uninterested in the destructive elephant, have seen the gun and are excited to see the beast shot. Orwell feels uncomfortable—he had not planned to shoot the elephant, and requested the rifle only for self-defense.

The crowd reaches the rice paddies, and Orwell spots the elephant standing next to the road. The animal is calmly eating grass. Killing an elephant is akin to destroying “a huge and costly piece of machinery,” and after seeing the peaceful creature, Orwell understands that he should not shoot it. Orwell suspects that the animal’s attack of “must” will soon be over. He makes up his mind to simply watch the elephant to make sure it does not become aggressive again, and does not plan on harming it.

However, after he makes this decision, Orwell glances back at the crowd behind him. It has swelled to over two thousand people, all of whom are excitedly expecting to see the elephant’s demise. Orwell feels as though he is a magician tasked with entertaining them, and realizes that he is now compelled to shoot the elephant.

His inability to resist the crowd’s bloodlust makes Orwell realize that his authority over the locals is a hollow sort of power. Orwell, the imperialist, cannot do anything other than what the Burmese expect him to do. He is constrained by having to “impress” the empire’s subjects by embodying the “conventionalized figure” of Western authority. In this way, Orwell reflects, “when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” Orwell realizes that he committed to killing the elephant the moment he ordered that he be brought a rifle. He entertains the possibility of doing nothing and letting the elephant live, but concludes that this would make the crowd laugh at him. His entire mission as a colonialist, he says, is not to be laughed at—thus, sparing the elephant is not an option.

Still, Orwell does not want to kill the beast. It appears “grandmotherly” to him; killing it would be a form of murder. Moreover, killing an elephant is a waste of an expensive commodity. The locals tell Orwell that the elephant has kept to itself, but may charge if provoked. Orwell decides that the best way to handle the situation would be to approach the elephant to test its temperament and only harm the animal if it behaved aggressively. However, to do this would endanger Orwell, and worse still, he would look like an idiot if the elephant maimed him in front of the natives.

There is only one thing Orwell can do. He loads the gun, lies on the road, and takes aim at the elephant. The crowd sighs in anticipation. Orwell aims at the elephant’s head—too far forward to hit the brain, he thinks—and fires. The crowd roars in excitement, and the elephant appears suddenly weakened. After a bit of time, the elephant sinks to its knees and begins to drool. Orwell fires again, and the elephant does not fall—instead, it wobbles back onto its feet. A third shot downs the elephant. As it tumbles to the ground, however, it trumpets and appears to grow even larger, and its fall shakes the earth on which Orwell lies.

The elephant lies on the ground, breathing laboriously. Orwell waits for it to die, but it continues to breathe. He fires at its heart, but the elephant hardly seems to notice the bullets. Orwell is distressed to see the elephant laboring to die, clearly in agonizing pain, so he fires his smaller-caliber rifle into its body countless times. These bullets do nothing; the elephant continues to breathe torturously. Orwell leaves the scene, unable to bear the elephant’s suffering any longer. He is later told that the elephant took a half hour to die. Shortly thereafter, the Burmese stripped the meat off its bones.

Orwell’s choice to kill the elephant was controversial. The elephant’s owner was angry, but, as an Indian, had no legal recourse. Older British agreed with Orwell’s choice, but younger colonists thought it was inappropriate to kill an elephant just because it killed a coolie, because they are of the opinion that elephants are more valuable than coolies. Orwell notes that he is lucky the elephant killed a man, because it gave his own actions legal justification. Finally, Orwell wonders if any of his comrades understood that he killed the elephant “solely to avoid looking a fool.”