Shooting an Elepahant

1.In the essay, Shooting an Elephant, the story is about a British police officer who patrols the streets of Burma. In the story a rather tame elephant goes berserk in the town. The officer follows the beast all around town and finally has it cornered, but he is wondering if killing it is really the best solution. In this story there are two dissimilar themes. The first one is British rule over the Burmese people (or Imperialism) and the second theme is peer pressure. As the story goes along these two themes seem to intertwine.
The British officer seems to hate the Imperialistic ideas of the British as he says, “I was all for the Burmese” (Orwell 222) The rest of the Burmese people seem to just treat him as another officer who they hate. But when he corners the elephant rifle at hand, the Burmese crowd behind him seem to honor him because he is about to kill this beast. The officer is now thinking that the elephant has calmed down, but this might be his one and only chance to prove himself to the natives. So he conforms to peer pressure and kill the elephant. This is how these themes join together.

2. Orwell has a lot of unflattering aspects about himself. Some tactics that Orwell employ whenever he is doing this is first, to say how he feels about the situation at hand. Next he will play out the situation in two ways. What he ought to have done in the situation and what he did do. He says, I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior.” “But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing.” (Orwell 225)