The Real Nature of Imperialism
A Comparison of Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" & Conrad's Heart of Darkness Throughout history, writers have written about many different subjects based on their personal experiences. George Orwell, under the pseudonym of Eric Blair, was one of the most famous political writers of the twentieth century. He was born in Bengal, India in 1903 to an English Civil Servant. Failing to win a scholarship to a university, he went to Burma to serve in the Imperial Police as an assistant superintendent. Eventually Orwell's mounting dislike of imperialism led him to his resignation. His revelations of the behavior of the colonial officers appear in his essay "Shooting an Elephant." In this essay, Orwell describes an incident that, he suggests, demonstrates "the real nature of imperialism." This so-called imperialism found in "Shooting an Elephant" can be compared to that found in Joseph Conrad's literature of empire, Heart of Darkness. In "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell demonstrates that no matter what one's beliefs, or position in society, no individual is absent from the immense pressure to conform. Orwell, a British police officer in Burma, allows an anxious crowd of locals to decid
e his actions for him, causing him to take a life that should not have been taken. nerves went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rights, which. Orwell states, "But I did not want to shoot the elephant. Kurtz had lived in the Congo, and was separate from his own culture for quite some time. Here, secluded from the rest of his own society, he discovered his evil side and became corrupted by his power and solitude. Imperialism transforms Orwell and Kurtz into civilian-like creatures who are ironically at the mercy of their own powerlessness and the power of the people they come in contact with. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys" (Orwell 2460). However, it is the pressure from the crowd that causes this British military officer to make a poor choice that he would not have made alone. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him" (Orwell 2460).
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