9 ms·

Shooting an Elephant (1936)

113 points by rsj_hn 5y ago

genewitch 5y ago
How is something from 1936 still under copyright?
- ranko 5y ago
  It's not, in the UK at least, as Orwell died over 70 years ago (1950). It appears in the US (where this work is apparently still under copyright) the rule is 95 years from date of publication for works published before 1978.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bell-cot 5y ago
A short and telling story that I first read decades ago, in a community college English class. All that I recall now of the instructor's lesson was that the elephant was considered symbolic of the British Empire - which, in retrospect, was dying when Orwell wrote this. (Not too far from Wikipedia's current take - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant ) Now, with ~half a century more history behind us, things don't seem so simple. Independence started out so well...but after Burma's/Myanmar's coups, ethnic violence, atrocities...perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all. );
- option_greek 5y ago
  Yes not bad at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%931878 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%931...
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I imagine the great drought would have happened with or without the British empire.
    - option_greek 5y ago
      Might as well read the link I posted. The drought's effects were enhanced because of exporting of grain to Europe and forced switch to cash crops like Cotton in the years before.
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    Um...I was talking about Burma, and threw in a few more references, trying to make that clear. India is not Burma, and Wikipedia's entry on the famine barely mentions Burma in passing.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all. Blair/Orwell seemed to have this view too. “I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.” Their empire may have been better than some rulers, but that’s setting one very low bar.
- darksaints 5y ago
  I've never quite understood the idea that a paternalistic colonial power is better simply because it is more stable. I would much rather take part in an civil war than live under the subjugation of some colonial oppressor.
  - chege 5y ago
    I was about to strongly contend the opposite, but realized that I lack the insight into what either life is like for the typical native person. I lean towards a paternalistic colonial power because the odds of me and my loved ones living is much higher. Living in a civil war (and I admit that intensities of civil wars vary) seems like a more dangerous gamble.
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      > I lean towards a paternalistic colonial power Has this ever existed?
  - anthony_d 5y ago
    There are people who aren’t really concerned with which oppressor is subjugating them. They just want to go about their lives as well as they can. Presumably you were raised to think you have an impact on the world; many people don’t feel that way at all.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      Reminds me of that line in The Patriot along the lines of "How is 3000 tyrants one mile away better than one tyrant 3000 miles away?"
    - durovo 5y ago
      The British empire was extractive and exploitative in nature. They didn't just rule over these people, they ruled with the aim of extracting as much wealth and resources as possible. Many people wouldn't mind living under an oppressor who only imposes their ideologies/religion/way of living on you. e.g. the Mughal empire in the subcontinent might have imposed their religion in many instances but they treated the country like their own home. It is the stunted growth and several famines under the British empire that made many regions more prone to extreme poverty and conflicts.
- mc32 5y ago
  Nations deserve to have self determination but they also need to bear the consequences themselves.
  - rramadass 5y ago
    >but they also need to bear the consequences themselves. Not if you have ruined them completely politically, financially, culturally and socially and moreover stacked the deck against them in the "new world order". You bear the responsibility and owe them reparations. Relevant: In the context of this thread dealing with Orwell's writings, i highly recommend his essay Notes on Nationalism. - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... Excerpt: All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.
- mrjangles 5y ago
  That is a strange interpretation as Orwell makes it clear the he represents the British Empire, and the elephant represents the subjugated people. His vivid description of his own situation certainly matches how most history books (of the time) describe the British colonial situation, always being thrown from one situation to the next, inevitably guided by circumstance and unable to change course.
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    It was an English "literature" class (or at least that bit was) - so suggesting & discussing various possible interpretations of the story was part of the objectives. Consider instead Orwell as the tiny, educated, supposedly wise ruling elite. (Of the British Empire, in this case. But the point is more general.) He knows the "right" thing to do here...but under the perceived weight of at-the-moment public expectation, and with a convenient excuse at hand, he instead does the stupid, destructive thing instead. Incompetently.
  - trgn 5y ago
    Agreed. It is quite clear what the story is about, and projecting excessive meaning on the elephant (or even a completely wrong interpretation) is typical of literature classes being designed more to entertain the intellectual kick adolescents (and their professors) have for philosophizing. Rather than actually reading the words, this way of reading always devolves into projecting once own thoughts and wills and wants on an author's work. Apart from what may have been the trigger to write the piece (disillusionment in empire building, his personal humiliations, being confronted with once own cowardice, ...) Orwell really recounts a real life event, the factual existence of the enraged elephant and it getting shot preceding any literary device. Even in this short text, Orwell is explicitly clear, dedicating many paragraphs to it, about his thoughts on colonization, and his personal role in it, and the current state of the British empire. The meaning of the peice is quite clear, it is in Orwells written thoughts, his actual words, and not coming from any metaphors. The older I get, the more I believe that over-intellectualizing works of literature does an enormous disservice to an author. It robs their work of its inherit dignity and minimizes the writer's intents. Criticism instead then is a primarily self-centered exercise, putting the reader central, rather than the work itself. Instead, I think, we should teach our youth to start with the words, teach them to be generous and empathetic, learn to take the words first at face value. What is being said, when was it said. Only then, when obvious meaning escapes, try and peel back.
- strken 5y ago
  There's a quote from Orwell that I can't find right now, to the effect that running the machinery of empire was so soul-crushing that even a very competent administration couldn't justify it.
- rramadass 5y ago
  >but after Burma's/Myanmar's coups, ethnic violence, atrocities...perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all. Please never ever spout this nonsense again, we are all done with that part of History; Here is a relevant excerpt from G. K. Chesterton's article on Indian Independence movement; When all is said, there is a national distinction between a people asking for its own ancient life and a people asking for things that have been wholly invented by somebody else. There is a difference between a conquered people demanding its own institutions and the same people demanding the institutions of the conqueror. Suppose an Indian said: "I heartily wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Every system has its sins: and we prefer our own. There would have been dynastic wars; but I prefer dying in battle to dying in hospital. There would have been despotism; but I prefer one king whom I hardly ever see to a hundred kings regulating my diet and my children. There would have been pestilence; but I would sooner die of the plague than die of toil and vexation in order to avoid the plague. There would have been religious differences dangerous to public peace; but I think religion more important than peace. Life is very short; a man must live somehow and die somewhere; the amount of bodily comfort a peasant gets under your best Republic is not so much more than mine. If you do not like our sort of spiritual comfort, we never asked you to. Go, and leave us with it." Suppose an Indian said that, I should call him an Indian Nationalist, or, at least, an authentic Indian, and I think it would be very hard to answer him.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Chesterton's quote is a nice one, but that doesn't mean that the GP is "spouting nonsense". They may be focused more on outcomes rather than Chesterton's focus on maintaining national traditions and sovereignty. Both are valid views and both can be debated with nuance.
    - rramadass 5y ago
      >Both are valid views and both can be debated with nuance No. When it comes to Colonialism (and ideas of Superior/Inferior races) there is no two ways about it; it is untenable and unacceptable.
- asdff 5y ago
  People like stability, ultimately. It's what lends political support from the populace towards these regimes in the first place. I found this quote in another article posted on HN today and it seemed tangentially related to this idea: "Other fishermen in the area use high-voltage transmitters to electrocute fish, killing eggs, bottom feeders and anything else in the vicinity. It’s illegal but widespread and rarely punished. “There’s hardly any fish already, and these bastards kill the rest,” Abu Fayal says bitterly. “In Saddam’s time, he would have hung them.”" https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-of-the-marsh-arabs/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-of-the-marsh-arabs/
  - mach1ne 5y ago
    Quite so. The old rule holds true: When quality of life is rising, no matter the regime, populace is happy. When quality of life is dropping, populace will revolt.
  - bartread 5y ago
    I spent time in Paraguay back in 2003. There was a similar attitude towards Alfredo Stoessner amongst many Paraguayans who were old enough to remember his regime (ended in 1989). Here the driver I was most aware of was street crime: robbery was commonplace, and many of the criminals carried guns and weren't afraid to use them. Whereas in Stroessner's time you could walk the streets at night in safety because the criminals would all have been imprisoned or killed. (18 years later I have no idea how the situation might have changed.)
    - Nux 5y ago
      Very similar situation in Ceausescu's Romania (which also ended in 1989), in broad terms. Many people (unhappy with their current quality of life) are still nostalgic of the old days. Low criminality, low unemployment, high home ownership (still the highest in the world even now) were some of the upsides.
      - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
        If you read interviews with Afghan women (outside a small urban elite), they mention similar upsides to the Taliban. At least they prevent crime. At least they have principles, however harsh. At least they're predictable. At least they forced out the thugs that the Americans had backed.
- phreeza 5y ago
  I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule, without experiencing it or even having contemporary reporting about it. We do know it was apparently bad enough for people to rise up against it, and were willing to sacrifice their lives, in many places over an extended period of time. That suggests to me that it wasn't all that great either. It's impossible to know what the counterfactual would have been of course, but I have no trouble imagining even worse outcomes under colonial rule.
  - rramadass 5y ago
    >I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule, without experiencing it or even having contemporary reporting about it. What? Colonialism is recent History, there is enough documented evidence of all its downsides and with still living Survivors from that era. And of course its after effects which we are all living through. No need to "Whitewash" it.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule Can it be inferred that you’re not living somewhere that it working though it’s colonial scars? There are a lot of civil wars and low level conflicts right now that are directly related to a colonial past. We also have plenty of records of atrocities, so “it could have been worse” is a strange argument. The Belgian Congo comes to mind immediately, but there are unlimited terrible examples.
    - phreeza 5y ago
      I think you misunderstood my comment, I'm saying things could have easily been worse if colonialism had continued, in response to the parents claim that bad things happened after the end of colonialism. The opening line was just my attempt to read the parent as charitably as possible, as is the custom on HN. Edit: I can't edit the original post any more, but if I could I would change the last line to "but I have no trouble imagining even worse outcomes had colonial rule continued." For clarity.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > coups, ethnic violence, atrocities Also a feature of British rule, such as in Kenya. It is difficult to untangle how much this was directly the product of colonial policy, such as having preferred ethnic groups among the local power structure, how much was racist policing and over-responding with violence, and how much was pre-existing ethnic or religious conflict.
- Daub 5y ago
  I have many Burmese friends, and stayed there a number of times. Note how I call it Burma, not Myanmar, which was the name chosen for it by the Junta. The Junta were also responsible for moving the capital from Yangon (the natural and historical capital) to Naypyidaw (back of beyond boondocks). They did this on the advice of a fortune teller. When I was there one of the daughters of a local general was being married. She was famous for liking diamonds, the local supply of which ran out as a result of people trying to curry favor with her father. Burma was a name chosen by the British, but from my experience the Burmese feel more (or at least as much) ownership of that word as Myanmar. Now the power brokers in Burma are the Chinese. There has always been a strong connection between Burma and China, and when Burma opened up, they jumped right in. In many ways they were better prepared than the westerners. Most of them already spoke Burmese, and were far better acquainted with their history. However, the locals are no fans... a popular complaint is that fill the roads with their huge cars yet live in gated compounds and general flaunt it. One you get to know them, the people are warm and open, but also (if I may generalize) just a bit crazy. In the community I moved in, I would say about five percent were substance abusers, and at least as many had spent some time in state prison. But given the opportunity, I would return in a heart beat.
orionblastar 5y ago
He shot the elephant to avoid looking a fool to the natives. It took a long time to kill the elephant as well.
- makach 5y ago
  I feel sorry for the elephant. I feel sorry for the author. I feel sorry for the victims. No winners, just losers. And in the between there is doing the expected contradicting our own standards, not chosing to do right, nor do any wrong - but doing nothing and accepting the narrative before it has even played out.
  - orionblastar 5y ago
    The elephant was sick with musk and trampled a native. The natives demanded the law/police kill the elephant. When he got to the elephant the musk was done and the elephant was well again. It is not about what is right or wrong, it is what the majority want. Right now in the USA we have cancel culture using social media to get people fired from their jobs for mistakes they make. Sort of like the natives that wanted the elephant killed. The majority rule in politics in the USA and determine who gets elected. The average person has an IQ of 100, and half are dumber than that. It is easier to fool them than it is to convince them that they have been fooled. Life is suffering according to Buddhism, we all suffer in some way shape or form.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    Maybe I’m lacking empathy, but I don’t feel that sorry. It was an unfortunate situation, but so is it when a Ranger needs to shoot a wild bear that’s been going through trash cans. In fact, usually the villain in the story is the person leaving unsecured trash around where wild animals can get at it. Similarly, the (native) people were clearly in the wrong for chaining down and abusing a wild animal, something that could have been made worse by the British but was probably going on long before the British showed up. The narrator strikes me as someone who has confidence issues and then rationalizes it by blaming it on colonialism or social pressure or whatever. He made the decision to kill a living thing, particularly in a poor way that caused the animal to suffer. If he made a mistake the honorable way to handle it is to admit it and take complete responsibility, not come up with excuses that retroactively frame it as some sort of philosophical dilemma.
iJohnDoe 5y ago
It’s interesting the writing style isn’t too far off from today’s writing style. My first instincts would guess the year written was false or it was purposely written in such a way to try to convince us it’s older than it really is.
- pjscott 5y ago
  There has been remarkably little English linguistic drift since the widespread adoption of the printing press.
  - animal531 5y ago
    I agree. Trying to read some Tarzan books that were translated to my local language in the 1980's now is an atrocity. But reading the English version is still pretty decent, and that is now older than 100 years (the language itself is still fine, but terms relating to natives and the ideology of the superior white man can get to be a bit over the top).
  - blincoln 5y ago
    I don't know how common it is, but a lot of the English writing I've seen from years gone by was written using extremely long continuous sentences.[1][2] I find it hard to parse some of it, because of having to mentally maintain so much "sentence state". For example, from Robinson Crusoe: "He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind." Orwell's style is much more well-ordered and understandable, IMO. Maybe the GP is referring to something like that? [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/521/pg521-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/521/pg521-images.html [2] https://archive.org/details/lettersfromegypt0000nigh https://archive.org/details/lettersfromegypt0000nigh
rsj_hn 5y ago
Posted this as Orwell is one of my favorite essayists (along with Gore Vidal). It's rare to see a free work like this, and it's a great essay.
- ejensler 5y ago
  Thanks for the reminder, I haven't read this in years! It's the first piece of writing of his that opened my eyes beyond 1984. If people are looking for other mildly humorous but still serious in the same vein, I would recommend "Down and Out in Paris and London."
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    His novel Burmese Days is similarly based on his experiences of this time.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Down and Out is my favorite book. His essays were so much better than his fiction, IMO.
rramadass 5y ago
PSA: The best one volume collection of Orwell's essays is an excellent hardcover edition Essays published by Everyman's Library well worth reading and having.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
Orwell is such an amazing writer. This passage here might be my favorite of the piece: > 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. Side note: I didn't know about Elephants and "Musth", so I looked it up: Musth or must (/ˈmʌst/; Urdu: مست‎, from Persian, lit. 'intoxicated') is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants characterized by highly aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones. Speaking of Elephants, I recommend a very interesting story about an Elephant named Jacopo in Venezia, Italy, ~200 years ago [0]. In that case, it was shot with a cannon, given that Venetians weren't exactly used to deal with Elephants in the city. [0]: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/curious-stories-of-venice/ https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/curious-stories-of-venice/
- El_RIDO 5y ago
  There is a similar story involving an Elephant in the Swiss town of Murten in 1866 - also assumed to have been in musth and shot by a cannon. https://second.wiki/wiki/elefant_von_murten https://second.wiki/wiki/elefant_von_murten
  - habi 5y ago
    The skeleton of which is now standing in the natural history museum of Bern, Switzerland ;) It’s meat was ‚converted‘ into Gulasch soup for the people of Murten…
moffkalast 5y ago
An elephant the soize of a tangerine. The Burmans had been throwing them away.
yummypaint 5y ago
This really reminded me of Impro by Johnstone, especially his thoughts about status. Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it.
CalChris 5y ago
Everyone should read Animal Farm and 1984. I read the family copy of Animal Farm 8th grade summer, and we regularly quoted Animal Farm back and forth growing up. I later read Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margerita and enjoyed it but when I had a Russian girlfriend she explained that I didn't understand it at all. It was the Russian Animal 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. Hitchens wanted to be Orwell. Hitchens was good but, nope, not Orwell. Hitchens was unbelievably wrongly wrong about Iraq and would never admit it. He should have re-read Shooting an Elephant very slowly, very carefully, with a long suffering English lecturer patiently getting its point across. It'd help if he'd actually lived there instead of just wearing a Kurdish pin.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > Hitchens was unbelievably wrongly wrong about Iraq and would never admit it This absolutely disintegrated the UK left, especially the more "modern liberal" end, because they'd got on board the idea of gunpoint liberation of post-colonial countries run by strongmen and/or Islamists. When this turned out to be a disaster, there was nowhere ideologically to go that didn't involve admitting error. Like Orwell, they came to Iraq with no choice other than to shoot the elephant.
  - CalChris 5y ago
    Yes, but Orwell having shot the elephant understood the pointlessness of it, understood that the Great Game was being played back on the West. Hitchens never got that, or never admitted to getting that.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Homage to Catalonia Is another great book I’d add to your review list. His description of trench warfare and if bayonetting someone is one of the more horrible things I’ve read.

113 points by rsj_hn 5y ago

genewitch 5y ago

How is something from 1936 still under copyright?

ranko 5y ago
It's not, in the UK at least, as Orwell died over 70 years ago (1950). It appears in the US (where this work is apparently still under copyright) the rule is 95 years from date of publication for works published before 1978.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bell-cot 5y ago

A short and telling story that I first read decades ago, in a community college English class. All that I recall now of the instructor's lesson was that the elephant was considered symbolic of the British Empire - which, in retrospect, was dying when Orwell wrote this. (Not too far from Wikipedia's current take - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant ) Now, with ~half a century more history behind us, things don't seem so simple. Independence started out so well...but after Burma's/Myanmar's coups, ethnic violence, atrocities...perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all. );

option_greek 5y ago
Yes not bad at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%931878 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%931...
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I imagine the great drought would have happened with or without the British empire.
  - option_greek 5y ago
    Might as well read the link I posted. The drought's effects were enhanced because of exporting of grain to Europe and forced switch to cash crops like Cotton in the years before.
- bell-cot 5y ago
  Um...I was talking about Burma, and threw in a few more references, trying to make that clear. India is not Burma, and Wikipedia's entry on the famine barely mentions Burma in passing.
lostlogin 5y ago
> perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all. Blair/Orwell seemed to have this view too. “I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.” Their empire may have been better than some rulers, but that’s setting one very low bar.
darksaints 5y ago
I've never quite understood the idea that a paternalistic colonial power is better simply because it is more stable. I would much rather take part in an civil war than live under the subjugation of some colonial oppressor.
- chege 5y ago
  I was about to strongly contend the opposite, but realized that I lack the insight into what either life is like for the typical native person. I lean towards a paternalistic colonial power because the odds of me and my loved ones living is much higher. Living in a civil war (and I admit that intensities of civil wars vary) seems like a more dangerous gamble.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > I lean towards a paternalistic colonial power Has this ever existed?
- anthony_d 5y ago
  There are people who aren’t really concerned with which oppressor is subjugating them. They just want to go about their lives as well as they can. Presumably you were raised to think you have an impact on the world; many people don’t feel that way at all.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Reminds me of that line in The Patriot along the lines of "How is 3000 tyrants one mile away better than one tyrant 3000 miles away?"
  - durovo 5y ago
    The British empire was extractive and exploitative in nature. They didn't just rule over these people, they ruled with the aim of extracting as much wealth and resources as possible. Many people wouldn't mind living under an oppressor who only imposes their ideologies/religion/way of living on you. e.g. the Mughal empire in the subcontinent might have imposed their religion in many instances but they treated the country like their own home. It is the stunted growth and several famines under the British empire that made many regions more prone to extreme poverty and conflicts.
mc32 5y ago
Nations deserve to have self determination but they also need to bear the consequences themselves.
- rramadass 5y ago
  >but they also need to bear the consequences themselves. Not if you have ruined them completely politically, financially, culturally and socially and moreover stacked the deck against them in the "new world order". You bear the responsibility and owe them reparations. Relevant: In the context of this thread dealing with Orwell's writings, i highly recommend his essay Notes on Nationalism. - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... Excerpt: All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.
mrjangles 5y ago
That is a strange interpretation as Orwell makes it clear the he represents the British Empire, and the elephant represents the subjugated people. His vivid description of his own situation certainly matches how most history books (of the time) describe the British colonial situation, always being thrown from one situation to the next, inevitably guided by circumstance and unable to change course.
- bell-cot 5y ago
  It was an English "literature" class (or at least that bit was) - so suggesting & discussing various possible interpretations of the story was part of the objectives. Consider instead Orwell as the tiny, educated, supposedly wise ruling elite. (Of the British Empire, in this case. But the point is more general.) He knows the "right" thing to do here...but under the perceived weight of at-the-moment public expectation, and with a convenient excuse at hand, he instead does the stupid, destructive thing instead. Incompetently.
- trgn 5y ago
  Agreed. It is quite clear what the story is about, and projecting excessive meaning on the elephant (or even a completely wrong interpretation) is typical of literature classes being designed more to entertain the intellectual kick adolescents (and their professors) have for philosophizing. Rather than actually reading the words, this way of reading always devolves into projecting once own thoughts and wills and wants on an author's work. Apart from what may have been the trigger to write the piece (disillusionment in empire building, his personal humiliations, being confronted with once own cowardice, ...) Orwell really recounts a real life event, the factual existence of the enraged elephant and it getting shot preceding any literary device. Even in this short text, Orwell is explicitly clear, dedicating many paragraphs to it, about his thoughts on colonization, and his personal role in it, and the current state of the British empire. The meaning of the peice is quite clear, it is in Orwells written thoughts, his actual words, and not coming from any metaphors. The older I get, the more I believe that over-intellectualizing works of literature does an enormous disservice to an author. It robs their work of its inherit dignity and minimizes the writer's intents. Criticism instead then is a primarily self-centered exercise, putting the reader central, rather than the work itself. Instead, I think, we should teach our youth to start with the words, teach them to be generous and empathetic, learn to take the words first at face value. What is being said, when was it said. Only then, when obvious meaning escapes, try and peel back.
strken 5y ago
There's a quote from Orwell that I can't find right now, to the effect that running the machinery of empire was so soul-crushing that even a very competent administration couldn't justify it.
rramadass 5y ago
>but after Burma's/Myanmar's coups, ethnic violence, atrocities...perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all. Please never ever spout this nonsense again, we are all done with that part of History; Here is a relevant excerpt from G. K. Chesterton's article on Indian Independence movement; When all is said, there is a national distinction between a people asking for its own ancient life and a people asking for things that have been wholly invented by somebody else. There is a difference between a conquered people demanding its own institutions and the same people demanding the institutions of the conqueror. Suppose an Indian said: "I heartily wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Every system has its sins: and we prefer our own. There would have been dynastic wars; but I prefer dying in battle to dying in hospital. There would have been despotism; but I prefer one king whom I hardly ever see to a hundred kings regulating my diet and my children. There would have been pestilence; but I would sooner die of the plague than die of toil and vexation in order to avoid the plague. There would have been religious differences dangerous to public peace; but I think religion more important than peace. Life is very short; a man must live somehow and die somewhere; the amount of bodily comfort a peasant gets under your best Republic is not so much more than mine. If you do not like our sort of spiritual comfort, we never asked you to. Go, and leave us with it." Suppose an Indian said that, I should call him an Indian Nationalist, or, at least, an authentic Indian, and I think it would be very hard to answer him.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Chesterton's quote is a nice one, but that doesn't mean that the GP is "spouting nonsense". They may be focused more on outcomes rather than Chesterton's focus on maintaining national traditions and sovereignty. Both are valid views and both can be debated with nuance.
  - rramadass 5y ago
    >Both are valid views and both can be debated with nuance No. When it comes to Colonialism (and ideas of Superior/Inferior races) there is no two ways about it; it is untenable and unacceptable.
asdff 5y ago
People like stability, ultimately. It's what lends political support from the populace towards these regimes in the first place. I found this quote in another article posted on HN today and it seemed tangentially related to this idea: "Other fishermen in the area use high-voltage transmitters to electrocute fish, killing eggs, bottom feeders and anything else in the vicinity. It’s illegal but widespread and rarely punished. “There’s hardly any fish already, and these bastards kill the rest,” Abu Fayal says bitterly. “In Saddam’s time, he would have hung them.”" https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-of-the-marsh-arabs/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-of-the-marsh-arabs/
- mach1ne 5y ago
  Quite so. The old rule holds true: When quality of life is rising, no matter the regime, populace is happy. When quality of life is dropping, populace will revolt.
- bartread 5y ago
  I spent time in Paraguay back in 2003. There was a similar attitude towards Alfredo Stoessner amongst many Paraguayans who were old enough to remember his regime (ended in 1989). Here the driver I was most aware of was street crime: robbery was commonplace, and many of the criminals carried guns and weren't afraid to use them. Whereas in Stroessner's time you could walk the streets at night in safety because the criminals would all have been imprisoned or killed. (18 years later I have no idea how the situation might have changed.)
  - Nux 5y ago
    Very similar situation in Ceausescu's Romania (which also ended in 1989), in broad terms. Many people (unhappy with their current quality of life) are still nostalgic of the old days. Low criminality, low unemployment, high home ownership (still the highest in the world even now) were some of the upsides.
    - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
      If you read interviews with Afghan women (outside a small urban elite), they mention similar upsides to the Taliban. At least they prevent crime. At least they have principles, however harsh. At least they're predictable. At least they forced out the thugs that the Americans had backed.
phreeza 5y ago
I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule, without experiencing it or even having contemporary reporting about it. We do know it was apparently bad enough for people to rise up against it, and were willing to sacrifice their lives, in many places over an extended period of time. That suggests to me that it wasn't all that great either. It's impossible to know what the counterfactual would have been of course, but I have no trouble imagining even worse outcomes under colonial rule.
- rramadass 5y ago
  >I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule, without experiencing it or even having contemporary reporting about it. What? Colonialism is recent History, there is enough documented evidence of all its downsides and with still living Survivors from that era. And of course its after effects which we are all living through. No need to "Whitewash" it.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule Can it be inferred that you’re not living somewhere that it working though it’s colonial scars? There are a lot of civil wars and low level conflicts right now that are directly related to a colonial past. We also have plenty of records of atrocities, so “it could have been worse” is a strange argument. The Belgian Congo comes to mind immediately, but there are unlimited terrible examples.
  - phreeza 5y ago
    I think you misunderstood my comment, I'm saying things could have easily been worse if colonialism had continued, in response to the parents claim that bad things happened after the end of colonialism. The opening line was just my attempt to read the parent as charitably as possible, as is the custom on HN. Edit: I can't edit the original post any more, but if I could I would change the last line to "but I have no trouble imagining even worse outcomes had colonial rule continued." For clarity.
pjc50 5y ago
> coups, ethnic violence, atrocities Also a feature of British rule, such as in Kenya. It is difficult to untangle how much this was directly the product of colonial policy, such as having preferred ethnic groups among the local power structure, how much was racist policing and over-responding with violence, and how much was pre-existing ethnic or religious conflict.
Daub 5y ago
I have many Burmese friends, and stayed there a number of times. Note how I call it Burma, not Myanmar, which was the name chosen for it by the Junta. The Junta were also responsible for moving the capital from Yangon (the natural and historical capital) to Naypyidaw (back of beyond boondocks). They did this on the advice of a fortune teller. When I was there one of the daughters of a local general was being married. She was famous for liking diamonds, the local supply of which ran out as a result of people trying to curry favor with her father. Burma was a name chosen by the British, but from my experience the Burmese feel more (or at least as much) ownership of that word as Myanmar. Now the power brokers in Burma are the Chinese. There has always been a strong connection between Burma and China, and when Burma opened up, they jumped right in. In many ways they were better prepared than the westerners. Most of them already spoke Burmese, and were far better acquainted with their history. However, the locals are no fans... a popular complaint is that fill the roads with their huge cars yet live in gated compounds and general flaunt it. One you get to know them, the people are warm and open, but also (if I may generalize) just a bit crazy. In the community I moved in, I would say about five percent were substance abusers, and at least as many had spent some time in state prison. But given the opportunity, I would return in a heart beat.

orionblastar 5y ago

He shot the elephant to avoid looking a fool to the natives. It took a long time to kill the elephant as well.

makach 5y ago
I feel sorry for the elephant. I feel sorry for the author. I feel sorry for the victims. No winners, just losers. And in the between there is doing the expected contradicting our own standards, not chosing to do right, nor do any wrong - but doing nothing and accepting the narrative before it has even played out.
- orionblastar 5y ago
  The elephant was sick with musk and trampled a native. The natives demanded the law/police kill the elephant. When he got to the elephant the musk was done and the elephant was well again. It is not about what is right or wrong, it is what the majority want. Right now in the USA we have cancel culture using social media to get people fired from their jobs for mistakes they make. Sort of like the natives that wanted the elephant killed. The majority rule in politics in the USA and determine who gets elected. The average person has an IQ of 100, and half are dumber than that. It is easier to fool them than it is to convince them that they have been fooled. Life is suffering according to Buddhism, we all suffer in some way shape or form.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  Maybe I’m lacking empathy, but I don’t feel that sorry. It was an unfortunate situation, but so is it when a Ranger needs to shoot a wild bear that’s been going through trash cans. In fact, usually the villain in the story is the person leaving unsecured trash around where wild animals can get at it. Similarly, the (native) people were clearly in the wrong for chaining down and abusing a wild animal, something that could have been made worse by the British but was probably going on long before the British showed up. The narrator strikes me as someone who has confidence issues and then rationalizes it by blaming it on colonialism or social pressure or whatever. He made the decision to kill a living thing, particularly in a poor way that caused the animal to suffer. If he made a mistake the honorable way to handle it is to admit it and take complete responsibility, not come up with excuses that retroactively frame it as some sort of philosophical dilemma.

iJohnDoe 5y ago

It’s interesting the writing style isn’t too far off from today’s writing style. My first instincts would guess the year written was false or it was purposely written in such a way to try to convince us it’s older than it really is.

pjscott 5y ago
There has been remarkably little English linguistic drift since the widespread adoption of the printing press.
- animal531 5y ago
  I agree. Trying to read some Tarzan books that were translated to my local language in the 1980's now is an atrocity. But reading the English version is still pretty decent, and that is now older than 100 years (the language itself is still fine, but terms relating to natives and the ideology of the superior white man can get to be a bit over the top).
- blincoln 5y ago
  I don't know how common it is, but a lot of the English writing I've seen from years gone by was written using extremely long continuous sentences.[1][2] I find it hard to parse some of it, because of having to mentally maintain so much "sentence state". For example, from Robinson Crusoe: "He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind." Orwell's style is much more well-ordered and understandable, IMO. Maybe the GP is referring to something like that? [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/521/pg521-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/521/pg521-images.html [2] https://archive.org/details/lettersfromegypt0000nigh https://archive.org/details/lettersfromegypt0000nigh

rsj_hn 5y ago

Posted this as Orwell is one of my favorite essayists (along with Gore Vidal). It's rare to see a free work like this, and it's a great essay.

ejensler 5y ago
Thanks for the reminder, I haven't read this in years! It's the first piece of writing of his that opened my eyes beyond 1984. If people are looking for other mildly humorous but still serious in the same vein, I would recommend "Down and Out in Paris and London."
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  His novel Burmese Days is similarly based on his experiences of this time.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Down and Out is my favorite book. His essays were so much better than his fiction, IMO.

rramadass 5y ago

PSA: The best one volume collection of Orwell's essays is an excellent hardcover edition Essays published by Everyman's Library well worth reading and having.

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

Orwell is such an amazing writer. This passage here might be my favorite of the piece: > 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. Side note: I didn't know about Elephants and "Musth", so I looked it up: Musth or must (/ˈmʌst/; Urdu: مست‎, from Persian, lit. 'intoxicated') is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants characterized by highly aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones. Speaking of Elephants, I recommend a very interesting story about an Elephant named Jacopo in Venezia, Italy, ~200 years ago [0]. In that case, it was shot with a cannon, given that Venetians weren't exactly used to deal with Elephants in the city. [0]: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/curious-stories-of-venice/ https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/curious-stories-of-venice/

El_RIDO 5y ago
There is a similar story involving an Elephant in the Swiss town of Murten in 1866 - also assumed to have been in musth and shot by a cannon. https://second.wiki/wiki/elefant_von_murten https://second.wiki/wiki/elefant_von_murten
- habi 5y ago
  The skeleton of which is now standing in the natural history museum of Bern, Switzerland ;) It’s meat was ‚converted‘ into Gulasch soup for the people of Murten…

moffkalast 5y ago

An elephant the soize of a tangerine. The Burmans had been throwing them away.

yummypaint 5y ago

This really reminded me of Impro by Johnstone, especially his thoughts about status. Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it.

CalChris 5y ago

Everyone should read Animal Farm and 1984. I read the family copy of Animal Farm 8th grade summer, and we regularly quoted Animal Farm back and forth growing up. I later read Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margerita and enjoyed it but when I had a Russian girlfriend she explained that I didn't understand it at all. It was the Russian Animal 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. Hitchens wanted to be Orwell. Hitchens was good but, nope, not Orwell. Hitchens was unbelievably wrongly wrong about Iraq and would never admit it. He should have re-read Shooting an Elephant very slowly, very carefully, with a long suffering English lecturer patiently getting its point across. It'd help if he'd actually lived there instead of just wearing a Kurdish pin.

pjc50 5y ago
> Hitchens was unbelievably wrongly wrong about Iraq and would never admit it This absolutely disintegrated the UK left, especially the more "modern liberal" end, because they'd got on board the idea of gunpoint liberation of post-colonial countries run by strongmen and/or Islamists. When this turned out to be a disaster, there was nowhere ideologically to go that didn't involve admitting error. Like Orwell, they came to Iraq with no choice other than to shoot the elephant.
- CalChris 5y ago
  Yes, but Orwell having shot the elephant understood the pointlessness of it, understood that the Great Game was being played back on the West. Hitchens never got that, or never admitted to getting that.
lostlogin 5y ago
Homage to Catalonia Is another great book I’d add to your review list. His description of trench warfare and if bayonetting someone is one of the more horrible things I’ve read.