Shooting An Elephant I just read George Orwell’s essay…
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Shooting An Elephant
I just read George Orwell’s essay titled Shooting An Elephant. I find myself a bit frustrated with the general content of the essay. This is all essentially bickering on my behalf, and I do feel a lot of sympathy for the situation Orwell found himself in, but on a moral level I find his decision to kill the elephant quite frustrating and hardly defendable.
To his credit, Orwell doesn’t really defend himself, but in the essay he does say that before killing the elephant he realizes the absurdity of imperial power and the falsehood of the authority that has been bestowed upon him. He frames it as though this occurs to him specifically BEFORE killing the elephant. And he also doesn’t really express any explicit regrets.
I’m not going to act like the context he found himself in isn’t one where essentially anyone would feel incredible pressure to go ahead with the killing, but given his realization, and also his general acknowledgement of authority (and that even then he seems to have been aware that his authority was more or less undeserved/ridiculous/meaningless) I feel as though his decision to go through with the killing is somewhat contradictory of the actual thesis he seems to be putting dow. If you know your authority is ridiculous, if you know killing the elephant is not necessary, and if you know you don’t want to kill it, why kill it?
I love Orwell, believe it or not I haven’t read either of his hallmark novels but I have read many of his essays and find his thinking glamorous and usually agreeable. I’m not really attacking him, but I found this essay really frustrating in an abstract way. Yes I just read it. Yes this writing is reactionary to the emotions produced while reading a description of an elephant dying an agonizing and slow death. But still, anyone agree with my perspective?
#entertainment
source
I just read George Orwell’s essay titled Shooting An Elephant. I find myself a bit frustrated with the general content of the essay. This is all essentially bickering on my behalf, and I do feel a lot of sympathy for the situation Orwell found himself in, but on a moral level I find his decision to kill the elephant quite frustrating and hardly defendable.
To his credit, Orwell doesn’t really defend himself, but in the essay he does say that before killing the elephant he realizes the absurdity of imperial power and the falsehood of the authority that has been bestowed upon him. He frames it as though this occurs to him specifically BEFORE killing the elephant. And he also doesn’t really express any explicit regrets.
I’m not going to act like the context he found himself in isn’t one where essentially anyone would feel incredible pressure to go ahead with the killing, but given his realization, and also his general acknowledgement of authority (and that even then he seems to have been aware that his authority was more or less undeserved/ridiculous/meaningless) I feel as though his decision to go through with the killing is somewhat contradictory of the actual thesis he seems to be putting dow. If you know your authority is ridiculous, if you know killing the elephant is not necessary, and if you know you don’t want to kill it, why kill it?
I love Orwell, believe it or not I haven’t read either of his hallmark novels but I have read many of his essays and find his thinking glamorous and usually agreeable. I’m not really attacking him, but I found this essay really frustrating in an abstract way. Yes I just read it. Yes this writing is reactionary to the emotions produced while reading a description of an elephant dying an agonizing and slow death. But still, anyone agree with my perspective?
#entertainment
source
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