Shooting an Elephant
by George Orwell · first published 1975
50% recommend50% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Short personal essay about a colonial police officer in Burma, praised for its direct, honest voice and for showing how oppression feels to the oppressors; a good entry point to Orwell's non-fiction.
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His essays Shooting An Elephant and Politics and the English Language have always stuck with me. We have the 4 volume collection in the family. It's at an arm's distance right now. I read Animal Farm when I was 12 and 1984 a few years…
on “I say, damn it, where are the beds? New books on Orwell” ↗…it just kinda says “It’s a bit shit, isn’t it?” Aspidistra was just boring and stupid. You also do not hear Orwell’s voice and that direct unapologetic honesty you get from his essays (“A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant” are great). I get an idea he was trying to write like the great male writers of his era, not as himself, as a reporter of human life, what all good writers really are. But that’s just my opinion and…
on “Why I Write (1946)” ↗George Orwell. I recommend "Shooting an elephant": http://www.george-orwell.org/Shooting_an_Elephant/0.html
on “Ask Yc:are there any other popular essayists” ↗the classic, "Shooting an Elephant": http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/
on “Tom Siebel on Being Gored by an Elephant” ↗Obviously late to the discussion, but surprised no one has posted a link to this famous Orwell essay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant
on “How to damage your brand in one smooth shot - Way to GoDaddy” ↗I have fond memories of reading his essays, notably Shooting an Elephant [1]. They left a vivid impression on me when I was younger. [1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
on “Orwell’s Escape” ↗…Farm but you really had to know Russian history to understand the allegories. I read Down and Out my first year of college. What stuck with me was his idea that it is very expensive to be poor. I read Shooting an Elephant for an English class. It's hard not to think of the pointlessness of the Great Game when thinking about Afghanistan. Politics and the English Language, Notes on Nationalism, ... Orwell was a great writer.…
on “Shooting an Elephant (1936)” ↗…a novel about Orwell's time in Burma. It's not like Orwell hid this part of his past -- he wrote a novel of his own (Burmese Days) influenced by his time there, and some of his more famous essays e.g. Shooting an Elephant deal with his time as a colonial police officer.
on “Before he was George Orwell, he was Eric Blair, police officer” ↗…fact that the good intentions of some British imperialists were counterbalanced by atrocities and acts of unthinking violence. Caroline Elkins' work is important in the same way that George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is - it documents cruelties, not to settle scores, but to help us avoid repeating them. - Arguably, more violence and hatred could be incited by failing to remember horrible past events. In other words,…
on “Uncovering the truth about the British empire and the Mau Mau uprising” ↗…socialist, an important political distinction which it is hard for some modern readers to understand. Orwell would have seen trauma before Catalonia, during his time as a colonial policeman in Burma. "Shooting an Elephant" https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_el... gives a taste of that. (obvious content warning applies)
on “A hidden network of 17th-century female spies (2019)” ↗…that continues to color how we picture state censorship in controlled societies." Orwell was equally 'horrified' by the British Empire's imperialist practices, which he documented in then-Burma. See "Shooting an Elephant" for example: George Orwell: "I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing.... I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant…
on “An illustrated guide to post-Orwellian censorship (2021)” ↗Reminds me of Orwell's "Shooting An Elephant"
on “Two Norwegian journalists arrested after interviewing Qatar World Cup Manager” ↗…metaphors. […] Animal Farm isn’t a critique of revolutionaries; it’s a critique of workers. It’s an aristocratic manifesto against the working class. https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/ Dolan on Shooting an Elephant: >[“Shooting an Elephant”] is a vivid, simple story about how the young Orwell was forced by the pressure of an expectant Burmese crowd to shoot a harmless elephant. Orwell’s surface thesis, laid out…
on “George Orwell Complete Works” ↗