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Transcript

How George Orwell uses language in "Shooting an Elephant"

Why is it worth investigating?

  • It was a story which took place during the British Imperialism in the 1930s
  • The personal experience of George Orwell
  • He also questioned the actions of the British
  • There are many examples of literary devices used which plays a role of how the story is told

What will be discussed:

  • POV - 1st person perspective
  • Diction & Description in relation to mood & tone
  • Imagery
  • The Figurative Language
  • Alliteration
  • Anaphora
  • Metaphors
  • Oxymoron
  • Onomatopoeia
  • Paradox
  • Simile
  • Irony
  • Personification

tone & mood

Diction & Description

The author uses eastern terminology:

  • Bazaar (eastern marketplace)
  • Betel (leaf of a plant chewed in Burma)

Words from Latin:

  • Saecula saeculorum (the idea of eternity, "in a century of centuries")
  • In terrorem ("into/about fear," is a legal warning, given in hope of compelling someone to act without resorting to a lawsuit or criminal prosecution)

Words related to the Hindu culture:

  • Raj (government or rule)
  • Mahout (elephant keeper and driver)
  • Coolie (a hired laborer)
  • Mahout (skilled elephant trainer and handler)
  • Coringhee (From or having to do with the town of Coringa, India. It is in the state of Andhra Pradesh in the southeastern part of the country)
  • Dravidian (lower-caste Indian who speaks his own language, Dravidian)

Turkish and Arabic words:

  • Sahib (master, sir. Indians and Burmans used the word when addressing an Englishman.)

Point of View

The narrator tells the story in first-person point of view. He blames British tyranny and Burmese reaction to it for his troubles, as the following paragraph indicates:

I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

When he wrote the story he was a changed person compared to when the action took place.

He is therefore able to understand that before he "could not get anything into perspective."

If the story had been narrated from the point of view of the Burmese sub-inspector or the Burmese people, an attack on imperialism would be a very superficial argument and therefore less effective.

Hence, point of view also contributes to the total effect and support of the attack to imperialism.

Imagery

Picturesque Effect:

“… when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming… ”

Elephant's reaction to gunshots:

"He [the elephant] looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down."

How Orwell describes imperialism:

"believed that a muddled style could lead to vague thinking and that precision in both thought and writing was one of the chief defenses against political tyranny."

Figurative Language

Anaphora

Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant.

I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothed-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. .

Irony

Ironically, the natives actually control the executioner instead of being the other way around. The killing event actually makes him feel important.

He only cared not to be seen as a fool by the natives whom he sees as judges:

"I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool."

He lost his freedom as he did what was expected of him.

Finally, he was not interested in his moral righteousness as evidenced when he said:

"I was very glad that coolie had been killed; it put me in right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant."

Alliteration

Repetition of a Consonant Sound

" yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere,

cowed faces of the long-term convicts

I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool. . . .

I was momentarily worth watching.

He looked suddenly stricken,

An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. "

Simile

  • The friction of the great beast's foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit.
  • The elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow.
  • He seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree.
  • The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet. . . .

Paradox

[A] story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.

I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.

Onomatopoeia

the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named

....He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps,

Oxymoron

Combination of Contradictory Terms

ex.

grinning corpse

Metaphor

Comparison of Unlike Things Without Using Like, As, Than, or As If

"I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly." (Comparison of wills to a physical force)

Metaphorical expression in:

“I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool”.

The deep path of the huge elephants’ throat is described artistically with a vivid metaphor “caverns of pale pink throat”.

"I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind." (Comparison of the narrator to a puppet)

Conclusion

The text binds the psychological factors of the narrator through his superiority complex, dilemma, insecurity, guilt and sympathy.

Intelligent use of figurative language establishes the essay as an influential writing with literary value. The compactness of the narration arises from the consistency of thought, focused action and the implicit/explicit cohesive devises. The stylistic features of the text have secured ts influential status in the literary cannon.

Bibliography

  • Discuss the style of '' Shooting An Elephant'' by George Orwell? - Homework Help - eNotes.com. (n.d.). enotes.com. Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/discuss-style-shooting-an-elephant-by-george-338717
  • Elements of Fiction and Total Effect in Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell (2004) | Santiago. (n.d.). Elements of Fiction and Total Effect in Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell (2004) | Santiago. Retrieved May 15, 2014, from http://www.santiagosr.com/elements_fiction_and_total_effect_shooting_elephant_george_orwell_2004
  • How does the writer of "Shooting an Elephant" use irony? - Homework Help - eNotes.com. (n.d.). enotes.com. Retrieved May 1, 2014, from http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-writer-shooting-an-elephant-use-irony-7229
  • MegaEssays.com. (n.d.). Shooting an Elephant essays. Retrieved May 1, 2014, from http://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/24098.html
  • Rhetorical Analysis of Orwell's Shooting An Elephant. (n.d.). Scribd. Retrieved April 24, 2014, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/54437938/Rhetorical-Analysis-of-Orwell-s-Shooting-an-Elephant
  • Shooting an Elephant- G.Orwell. (n.d.). literatureatuwccr -. Retrieved May 1, 2014, from http://literatureatuwccr.wikispaces.com/Shooting+an+Elephant-+G.Orwell
  • Shooting an Elephant: a Study Guide. (n.d.). Shooting an Elephant: a Study Guide. Retrieved April 26, 2014, from http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides6/Shooting.html
  • WTA Tour Tennis. (n.d.). George Orwell "Shooting An Elephant" rhetorical analysis essay. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/561596-wta-tour-tennis/48232620
  • Yeasmin, N., Ferdoush, J., & Azad, M. A. (n.d.). “Shooting an Elephant”: A Stylistic Analysis . ASA University Review, Vol. 7 No. 1, January–June, 2013 . Retrieved April 27, 2014, from http://www.asaub.edu.bd/data/asaubreview/v7n1sl3.pdf

By Gabriele Raine Baljak

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