Rulers as the Subjects of Their Rules
Tags: Book Review, George Orwell, Literature, Essay

“Shooting an Elephant” a short story written by George Orwell is about a police officer who shoots escaped elephants in Burma, India. The story gives us a vision of British Imperialism in India and its consequences. As a literary text, it embodies several dualities and paradoxes. However, in my point of view, the central paradox that occurs through the narration is although they seem to be rulers of the system, white men also become subject to the imperialist system like Indian natives.

There are several examples in the text which illustrate the central paradox. To begin with, in the second paragraph, the narrator’s political view on imperialism appears. He, the narrator, identifies himself as an anti-imperialist, opponent of the current discriminatory system in India. However, as a White police officer, whose responsibility is to guard British people and their privileges, he cannot speak out about his oppositional political views. In other words, he opposes the system but he is also the guardian of it. The result of this situation can be seen in the following quote from the text:

For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it, the better. Theoretically — and secretly, of course — I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos — all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.

As it can be seen, because of his job, which leads him to the contradictory situation of being both an opponent and a guardian, he cannot show his “true” position of the political position regarding India. The only thing he can do is to feel guilty and solve his problems in silence like every Englishman in the east.

In addition to that responsibility, all the other people, both natives and British people, and the system expect him to be imperialist just because of him being white. When we look at the passage below, we can find some evidences of natives’ expectations of the narrator and also see their behaviour towards him as a result of this expectations:

No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer, I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end, the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

Moreover, the third and the most important example of the central paradox is the scene of the narrator being in front of a native crowd. When he looked at the crowd, immediately, he thinks that he should shoot the elephant. The main reason behind his opinion is that narrator thinks the natives signaled, by their behaviour, that they wanted him to kill the elephant. As consequence of this mental narrative, in the end, the narrator found out that actually he is only a puppet in front of the native crowd. He does what they expect from him to only prevent himself looking the fool. After the narrator’s flow of thoughts which are summarized in the beginning of this paragraph, the passage quoted below is located and it is an adequate example of both the situation and the central paradox:

And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.

As it can be seen, the narrator thinks that he is a puppet of the natives but it is a wrong deduction. We must see the fact that natives are the most powerless subjects of system and they are in a lower hierarchical position than the white men. Beside their position in the hierarchy, they also want the meat. They are hungry and poor. They may not have eaten any meat for a long time and if the elephant were shot, they will fill their stomach with its meat. Thus, the real ruler (or we can say “the real puppeteer”) over the narrator in this situation is the imperialism not the natives. Natives did what they have to do. And also, the narrator destroys his freedom when he turns into a tyrant who did what the system expects him to do.

To sum up, in the India under the British rule, a White police officer who was responsible for solving a case of escaped elephant starts to think about his position in the case. Firstly, he says that he cannot express his political views and he has to face with bad behaviour of the natives toward him just because of him being a white police officer. Secondly, he thinks that he does what the natives wants but we can see that it is a wrong deduction. The truth is that these two scenes demonstrate the fact that white men, besides looking like the ruler of it, also become subjected to the imperialist system.