Being Always Subject to "Imperial Power"

In the section where she talks about 'Racist but Moral Women, Innocent but Immoral Men', Stoler notes that even if

'European women were positioned as the bearers of a redefined colonial morality[,] to suggest that they fashioned this racism out of whole cloth is to miss the political chronology in which new intensities of racist practice arose... ...Significantly, what European women had to say had little resonance and little effect until their objections coincided with a realignment in both racial and class politics in which they were strategic' (Stoler 57).

This particularly struck me as it summed up nicely the feeling of futility one may feel in being part of the colonial enterprise. Recall the policeman in "Shooting an Elephant", and his painful awareness of his status as a representative of white prestige and thus the need to 'avoid looking a fool' (Orwell, "Shooting"). Recall also, Flory in "Burmese Days", where it is initially 'unthinkable' (Orwell, "Burmese Days") that he should stick up for Dr. Veeraswami, and ends up signing the document that Ellis writes. Both characters admit to the reality that 'when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys' (Orwell, "Shooting").

While Stoler's quote makes reference to women, it is clear that all entities under the colonial regime (women, men, animals; you name it) must follow their prescribed place in society, even if this place is irrational, immoral, or redundant. This is not to say that the status quo is static-on the contrary, it is ever-changing (Stoler gives the example of how concubinage is viewed differently over time). However, most noteworthy is the fact that this change only occurs when it is in keeping with the larger, current goals of the empire. Until then, one may agitate for change to little or no effect- such is 'imperial power' (Stoler's title).

(286 words excluding block quote)

Violence & the Crowd: Familiar?

In Burmese Days, we see the episode in which Flory and Elizabeth go shooting, and end up hunting down a tiger which they kill. This act of violence/killing, is just as graphic as the one we saw in Shooting an Elephant, but what was entirely different was how they set out to shoot( perform that act of violence in the first place). Elizabeth in particular seems to have quite an unsettling attitude toward violence; namely that she doesn’t quite care. When Flory was telling her about the “imperial pigeon”, how “the Burmese” believe it vomits when it dies and that it is “murder to shoot them”, all she asks is “Are they good to eat?” (All Ch 13)This (apart from being horrifically funny), suggests not just an absent “humanitarianism”(Stoler 514), but also a certain consumption of the colonial land in terms of its exotic material(which we could read as the imperial west needing the raw materials to fuel their industrialized west)Elizabeth loves violence, it is only after this shooting event she seemed to be drawn to Flory( but we all know how THAT turned out). In the end, its violence, violence, violence: Flory shoots Flo( who is part of Flory in well name and companionship), then shoots himself, and of course that whole violence of the riot, which reverberates a clear “rejection of the terms of the civilizing mission”(Stoler 551) with its ideas of civility, order and humanity in the western imperialist lifestyle.

The riot outside the Club shows another Orwellian scene of the crowd, previously seen in Shooting an Elephant with those “yellow faces”, in Burmese days they were “pouring in by the hundreds” and “rushing around aimlessly” without much purpose except to keep “flinging stones, yelling and hammering at the walls”. The crowd is always painted as a mass (MESS) of “whatever-ness” with their noise and physical mass being the focus rather than their intellect or social purpose .This depiction may reflect Stoler’s idea that there is a “conflation of racial category… cultural competence and national identity” (Stoler 514). The mass of the Burmese are lumped together in their race and ‘therefore’ their lack of culture which perhaps to the west mean their(Burmese) ‘national identity’ equate to general incompetence.

Native-Colonial Friendships

What struck me as interesting of Orwell's Burmese Days was the seemingly similar relationship between Forly and Dr. Veraswami, and Forster's Fielding and Dr. Aziz in A Passage to India (Hey. They're both doctors.. interesting. Not.)

To me, these two native-colonial friendships reveal the inevitable strain between people of different races during the colonial period. As A Passage to India aptly ends with the notion that it was a matter of 'wrong time, wrong place' (316).

In Burmese Days, Flory and Dr. V share a close intimate relationship which is strangely 'allowed', unlike an "alliance, partisanship" (Burmese Chap. 6) which was forbidden. (Why so?) This, to me, is rather odd. And as much as Flory disses the colonial enterprise he "lack[s] the small spark of courage" (Chap. 5) that is required to make the right choice. He gives in to the immense pressure to act like a sahib (Chap. 13), this calls to mind Shooting An Elephant.

Similary, in A Passage to India, this pressure is summed up by the line, "The English always stick together!" (235) and that Fielding has once again abandoned Aziz for Miss Quested (236).

I think this native-colonial relationship presented in Burmese Days highlights an interesting point that not all the Englishmen were nasty buggers, some were under immense pressure to conform to both colonial and native expectations. To an extent, I actually find Shooting An Elephant and Burmese Days slightly sympathetic of the plight of 'certain' Englishmen.

P.S.: Am using the online text for Burmese Days so no page numbers! Pardon!

I am lonely, let me in!

I find it interesting to read Burmese Days after “Shooting an Elephant”. If I had not read “Shooting an Elephant” first, my attitude towards Burmese Days might have been quite different. As it is, I have problems with Elizabeth’s and Flory’s characters.

In my previous post, I said Orwell in “Shooting an Elephant” reflects the conflicts the White man faces simply because he is seen as a colonist. Flory seems to embody these conflicts and magnify them in Burmese Days. Both show an intense dislike for the British Empire and proclaim an interest in and sympathy for the Burmese. Both also reveal the pressures they are under to perform their proper prescribed roles in the colony. For Orwell, it was the act of having to shoot the elephant that highlighted his helplessness, that he even lacked control over whether or not he could shoot an elephant. For Flory, this helplessness was more profound. First, as a friend of Dr. Veraswami, he does not have as much power as the rest of the Europeans in the club. Second, despite his constant criticisms of ‘the British prestige, the white man’s burden, the pukka sahib sans peur et sans reproche’ (36), he still subscribes to it. He gives excuses for not being able to help his Oriental friend out: ‘No, he could not face that row! It was not worth it’ (46). Despite what Flory says, I still find that he desires to be a part of the White community, to fit in or at least, have someone else just like him. Which was why he desired Elizabeth, someone whom he thought would understand him and shared his point-of-view. This desire for her reflects his desire to conform and assimilate into British society more than to show his open-mindedness towards Burmese culture. Ultimately, Flory is still a White man who wants to belong somewhere, and this somewhere is still British society, whether he likes it or not.

Question- On Handling Racism

After today's discussion and reading the various blog posts, I'm confused with regards to racism in Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant". Are we supposed to read his derogatory/offensive lines such as 'sneering yellow faces' and 'an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie' etc as Orwell's remarks, or are we supposed to read them as his narrator's/characters' remarks?

I agree with Lucas when he says that such racist terms/ways of thinking have to be presented in order for Orwell to subvert/problematize them. Shouldn't we then be taking such remarks in the larger context of the story, or in trying to understand what Orwell was trying to achieve (e.g. subvert/problematize them), rather than looking at the lines individually? If we look at them out of context, sure, any reference to Burmese people as a homogenized 'sea of yellow faces' is indeed, as Achebe says, 'bloody racist'. But given that the narrator is an idiot (in many instances, e.g. he fails to fatally wound it several times, he cows to the need to not look a fool) who is, himself, a piece of evidence for us to 'grasp the hollowness' of colonialism- how seriously are we to take his words?

By 'how seriously', I don't mean to disregard them as unimportant- but rather, instead of reading them as merely racist lines (that they undoubtedly are), try to see how they function in the text as a larger whole? Just as the police officer is merely a cog in the machinery of imperialism, aren't these offensive lines a(n intentional) tool of Orwell's?

Please let me know what you guys think. I'm pretty confused as to how we're supposed to handle such lines in Orwell's texts (and maybe this' relevant for other course texts).

Thanks and enjoy the weekend!

Why Elephants are Shot

I fell asleep yesterday night while reading Chatterjee before I could post. Had this killer medical gem test yesterday. For that my sincere apologies.

I shall attempt to link the Chatterjee to Shooting an Elephant. The main thing I took away from the reading was that of the deviation of the colonial government in India from the idealised Western modern notion of a democratic government. Under the essay's heading "It Never Happened" Chatterjee discusses the idea of British colonialism as one of a "centralising tendency of 'military-fiscalism' inherited from previous regimes" (27), one that essentially bases itself on differences (in this reading, it is racial differences) in order to perpetuate fiscal power that is in favour of the ruling British power. In relating this to Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant", Orwell can be seen as discussing how power structures are created and sustained. Through the narrative's biographical re-accounting of a trivial incident, he draws parallels to empire and its basis of rule. In the nameless narrator's account of how the Burmese, the "yellow faces" egged him "a thousand wills pressed me on" into shooting the elephant, the idea of how power as based on a performative, collective set of rules that the parties agree upon and perpetuate. As the narrator states earlier on, the British individual becomes " a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalised figure of a sahib." In relating this to Chatterjee's article, can we then say that colonialism is merely a replacement of one "native" power regime with another power regime. That all regimes are ones based on differentiation and performative rules.

everyone wants an elephant

I would just like to add on to Christine’s point about the elephant not being a modernist symbol, because I didn’t see it as one either.

While there is a certain sense of ‘unknowability’ suggested by the failure to obtain any definite information about the elephant, it nonetheless remains that the elephant IS eventually located, isolated and killed. There is a consensus that is arrived upon with regard to the elephant: While the elephant starts off as being both an enigmatic and disruptive force, the end of its violent spree coincides with a ‘conquering’ of the enigma as the elephant is no longer presented as being beyond comprehension and knowledge.
The capitalist-imperial mind DOES succeed in inscribing the elephant within its own utilitarian terms. As the narrator describes it in terms of dollar worth: “Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds possibly”. Interestingly, the Burmese perspective also reduces the elephant to a simple object of value – the nutritional value that its meat provides.

This convergence of multiple perspectives into a single one is visualised in how all the Burmese people converge into a single body with a collective gaze directed upon the elephant as a thing to be killed and a source of food. Even the narrator is implicated within this gaze, as he states “The people expected it of me and I had got to do it”. Interesting to me, however, is that it is neither the white man nor the native who succeeds in gaining mastery over the elephant, but a sort of shared will, with the desire of the Burmese coinciding with the ability of the armed, white man.

A Panopticon in Reverse

The way in which the narrator in "Shooting An Elephant" is compelled by the colonial native gaze to act out the role expected of him suggests to me a sort of Panopticonism at work: under the public gaze, one is compelled to stay within the confines of prescribed behaviour.  The narrator shoots the elephant merely 'to avoid looking a fool'; he is his own 'policeman', unwilling to let himself buck the colonial narrative.  As the narrator notes, 'when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys'; by constructing the structures of power, the structure itself becomes a constraint on the colonizer's freedom of action.  In this way, the colonial entreprise turns into a faracial performance, one that can only end when the 'white man' abandons the entreprise, and thus leaves the Panopticon that he constructed.

-Yingzhao

Interesting Angle - Shooting

It is interesting to me how the story begins by providing an 'honest' view of a European official trapped - he "was stuck between [his] hatred of the empire [he] served and [his] rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make [his] job impossible". This 'in between-ness' is then declared a "normal by-product of imperialism", what then is the real product of imperialism? Did the "early British administrators in India [really intend] to train the people of India to govern and protect themselves ... rather than to establish the rule of a British bureaucracy?" (Chatterjee 14).

I think Orwell's story provides some sort of an answer. The shooting incident reveals "a better glimpse ... of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act". Lets just say the British administrators really intended on 'helping' the Indians modernise, however the immense pressure to "to act like a sahib ... to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things" prevents them from actually 'helping' the Indians, but reproduces the act of enslavement?

Simply put (I hope):
The immense pressure to rule, to be a figure of authority is that which fuels the colonial ambition and prevents any real 'help' from being given to the Indians.

I think Shooting An Elephant takes a rather sympathetic slant in addressing the colonial situation in India, and raises the question - to what extent was imperialism/colonialism in India a product of context (pressure) and/or the expectations of the natives?

P.S. Sorry about the rambling guys!

Shooting a man shooting an elephant

‘Shooting an elephant’ sounds very much like shooting a film called, ‘An Elephant’. At one point, the narrator is even described to have “la[in] down on the road to get a better aim”, a position which you can imagine some photographer out in Africa getting into. Conveniently, the rifle is depicted like it is a long range camera—“a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights”. The point I am perhaps trying to raise here is the idea of theatrics, of the spectacle, of performance. And the elephant certainly looks like it is on display, while the narrator clearly is as well.
I would go so far as to draw a parallel between both the elephant and the narrator—in the same way that the elephant is this huge being, the narrator is an agent of this other huge entity called the British Empire. (It helps that elephants are grey, because that’s the colour of institutions in my mind’s eye: stony grey walls, and high pillars which kind of look like the elephant’s four thick legs too eh?) Both elephant and empire are running amok, or going haywire—“the dirty work of Empire”—and both are literally and figuratively going down—“the British Empire is dying”. Indeed, in the same way the crowds rose against the elephant, they will rise against the flailing empire.
The difference between the two is that unlike the narrator, the elephant doesn’t have anything to prove. Like someone put it, an elephant is an elephant is an elephant. The white man, on the other hand, is on display because he is trying to prove his whiteness. The camera, or the stage, then turns on him here because the one being shot/filmed is really the white man. And the crowds are watching.

[295 words]

Shooting the heart

Reading Orwell’s Shooting An Elephant provides a refreshing insight into the difficulties of the imperialist. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but most of the times when I read colonial texts I tend to align myself more with the colonized as the victimized rather than with the colonizer. But here in SAE, it is not so simple. Orwell’s presentation of the dilemmas he face, in being both an imperialist and seemingly sympathetic attitude towards the Burmese, makes him one of the most humane characters. The way he is caught between the imperialists and the Burmese reminds me of Ronny in A Passage to India: how they have to change their attitudes and wear masks just so as to fit into their prescribed space. As Orwell highlights, ‘Feelings like these [hatred towards both the imperialists and the Burmese] are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty’. We are not presented with as much insight into Ronny’s mind, but I don’t think he buys entirely into the whole colonialism business but rather succumbs to the motion because he’s stuck in it; hence his constant parroting of the “wiser” senior imperialists.

Yet for Orwell, when the opportunity was presented for him to remain true to himself, he is pressurized to act otherwise. Despite how much he says he wants to let the elephant go, he can’t. He not only has to save his own face and act like a proper White man (‘A sahib has got to act like a sahib’), he is answerable to the Burmese themselves. It’s like a circus act: You want to see me shoot an elephant? Well, then you’ll see it! Ultimately, we come to the realization that neither the imperialist nor the colonized are truly free.

300 words

*As an aside, when I saw that we’re going to read this work on the course, I wondered if it was the same as the comprehension passage I did in secondary school. It was the same, although the one I read back then was a shorter edited version. And I remember my teacher tearing when she read aloud the part where Orwell just kept shooting the elephant…somehow, that memory just kept replaying itself when I was reading this again.*

-Yuen Mei-

The Reluctant Imperialist

Ok, I am a little sympathetic to the narrator. I see his inconsistencies, or hypocrisy at one level, and his reluctance in his role in the imperialist regime, as a human condition, not an imperialist one. What seems apparent in SAE and Chatterjee’s article, is that the disparity in theory and practice cannot be bridged easily especially in political history.

“Theoretically . . . I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British”.

In theory, the narrator bears “hatred of the empire” and is guilt ridden by the evils of imperialism. Yet at the practical level, he suffers “sneers”, “insults” and “hideous laughter” from the Burmese whom he, in theory, supported. The reality of the dislike and discrimination against the narrator by the Burmese flames his anger at them. Similarly in Chatterjee’s article, “that there should be one law alike for the European and Native is an excellent theory (21)” at best and cannot be practically realized in a period where racial and cultural differences are magnified by inequalities in power.

While one could argue that the narrator had a choice in his actions, it would also be oversimplifying a difficult issue such as colonialism. I think one problem with reading at a distance, is that it is easier to make moral judgments in hindsight because we do not experience the dilemmas or the full extent of political and emotional conflicts in a situation. I was just imagining if I was pressed with “two thousands wills” to act in a matter of minutes or seconds, what would I have done? While his inconsistencies between thought and action is problematic, since he is part of the imperialists, nonetheless we can empathize as he seems a more reluctant imperialist assuming a role placed upon him by both sides.

(300 words)

Irony in Shooting an Elephant

Orwell’s story is refreshingly ironic in its critique of British colonialism. Instead of cataloguing the cruel injustices meted by the British colonizer on the colonized in a run-of-the-mill fashion, it critiques colonialism by revealing how colonialism ironically inhibits the freedom of the colonizer. The first-person narrator experiences this revelation when he was assigned to resolve the case of the momentarily deranged elephant. Knowing that the madness was temporary, the narrator was reluctant to shoot despite possessing the “legal right” and “sufficient pretext” to do so due to the animal’s tragic killing of an Indian coolie. When the narrator assesses his visceral/emotional response towards killing, he comes to the conclusion that he does not in the “least want to shoot [the elephant].” Personifying and humanizing the elephant as grazing with a “preoccupied grandmotherly air”, he rationalizes about the moral grounds for killing and finds it wanting, knowing “with perfect certainty that [he] ought not to shoot” as “the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow.” The act possesses to him, the gravity of “murder.” Nonetheless, his sovereignty to act according to his own free will and values are inhibited by the oppressive premises of colonialism, which imposes the “conventionalized figure of the sahib” that the “natives expect” the narrator to conform to. Since the justification of colonialism is contingent upon the British colonizer’s self-imposed myth of the courageous, strong and “resolute” sahib who “knows his own mind”, and “do definite things”, the narrator does not want to “look like a cowardly and indecisive fool” in front of the natives. To “feebly” do nothing would be a laughable spectacle inviting mockery and cries of hypocrisy from the natives as it undermines the model image of the sahib that affirms British authority. Thus, the colonizer is ironically trapped and disempowered by his own myth. He realizes that “the moment the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys.” The colonizer’s superiority is an illusion. Although “seemingly the leading actor of the piece”, he is in reality only an absurd puppet” ironically subjugated by the very mechanisms that enables his oppression of the natives.

value of one indian

so far my favourite of the course texts - short, sweet and a straightforward read! :)

the way orwell saw it was, he persecuted what he described as a rather benign-seeming animal to preserve his pride (and that of the empire's). yet what i find most interesting is, he does not recall the murdered Indian in his description of it as having a "preoccupied grandmotherly air" and being "no more dangerous than a cow." He "knew with perfect certainty that [he] ought not to shoot him." this, knowing that the beast has just violently dashed an Indian's body into the mud, seems to me to be quite incredible. it points to the fact that life is measured in very different terms in different settings. every life is (supposedly) equal in a nation, but in a colony, when judged against a magnificent gentle creature, an Indian's life really is worth nothing at all. while orwell does acknowledge his complicity in empire to the extent that he was glad the Indian was killed so that he was legally permitted to shoot the elephant, i think he does overlook this moral issue. yes, one could argue he was subscribing to the Eastern ways of attributing different value to different men (caste and hierarchy systems), or of the mindset that one life is quite insignificant given how many there are (in India for eg) - when in Rome do as the Romans do, but that does not reconcile with the British Empire's moral highhorse and their ideals of honour and justice, which is in fact the moral impetus for colonizing in the first place. clearly, the colonies are settings which corrupt the Englishman but perhaps it is more the drawing out of what is already present in him, than rendering him newly evil. however, i'm sure these are way more complex issues than i make them out to be.

(299)

“He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it”

What I find most interesting in Orwell’s work is this whole idea of theory and convention being in opposition to a reality- a reality that ultimately mends itself and shapes itself to fit into theory, but that which in itself is highly individualised and moral. Hence, the mask is really the convention; the mainstream colonial discourse of how the colonizer ought to be, how he is percieved and how he ought to relate to the ‘native’ other. In Shooting the Elephant, of course this is questioned, for we have a narrator who struggles to fit into the mask granted to him, and who on the contrary feels pressure in needing to act out his role, and in trying not to appear inadequate as a person in power. Like Chatterjee implies, it is a performance that needs constant revision and monitoring because unlike theory or convention which is performing to given rules and codes, this is a performance that is not shielded by or elevated by a “stage”, a platform, or divider. Instead, we see the narrator with the masses, the ‘native’ community, and somehow the lines and binaries are less clear and helpful.

However, this mask is not merely one that the colonizer wears. The “yellow faces”, “happy and excited over this bit of fun” wear masks too- the ‘natives’ though conventionally subalterns, seem almost amused in watching the officer trying to fulfill his role and shoot the elephant. Like the narrator tells himself, he is the puppet, the ‘native’ the puppeteers, controlling his every move merely by expecting him to act like the colonizer, the all powerful one. Yet if this truly gives them power and authority is still questionable, for Orwell still presents them as the voiceless/faceless community

Inability to Shoot the Symbol

Since numerous classmates have talked about Chatterjee, I am going to focus on something slightly more different: the elephant in Orwell’s text.

The elephant, in a typically modernist way, represents the unknowability of things. No one in the text is able to pin down the exact whereabouts of the elephant: “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” (3). Just as Forster’s India eludes understanding and comprehension, so too does Orwell’s elephant.

Certainly, it is difficult to pin Orwell’s elephant down because its “madness” leads to chaos and confusion. Orwell’s elephant leaves a trail of devastating destruction behind, destroying “someone’s bamboo hut, [killing] a cow, and [raiding] some fruit-stalls and [devouring] the stock,” as well as inflicting violences upon “the municipal rubbish van” (2). Orwell’s elephant, in other words, muddles up colonial order and organization, in a way that is similar to how Forster, through Fielding, perceives India as “a muddle” (63).

At the end of Orwell’s text, there is no one single unitary perspective on the elephant. As the narrator emphasizes, “among the Europeans, opinion was divided” (8): “the older men said [the narrator] was right [while] the younger man said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie” (8). Instead of having some one come up with a single justification for killing the elephant, the narrator tells us that “there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant” (8); the implication being that the elephant cannot be seen from one angle but is presented from multiple perspectives.

The elephant thus becomes a modernist symbol, very much like the lighthouse in Virginia Woolf’s text and the “Buddha” symbols in Katherine Mansfield’s short stories.

(300 words)

Magic rifle

It’s difficult to compare this week’s readings, but I’ll give it a shot (pun!) anyway.

To support his claim that “the spread of modern institutions or technologies had not weakened the hold of caste in anyway, Vincent Smith argues that

The necessities of cheap railway travelling compel people to crowd into carriages and touch one another closely for many hours ... The immense practical advantages of a copious supply of good water from stand-pipes in the larger towns are permitted to outweigh the ceremonial pollution which undoubtedly takes place … but such merely superficial modifications of caste regulations.

I have a similar observation in Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant. The rifle superficially and temporarily unites the narrator and the Burmese but the essential difference between them as colonizer and colonized are never at anytime or in anyway effaced even though there are moments of shared ‘connection’ between the two.

The narrator “was momentarily worth watching” by the Burmese when he has “the magical rifle” in his hands. The rifle also unites the narrator and the Burmese for the common purpose of hunting down the elephant. The narrator with his “rifle in hand” has “two thousand people marching at my heels” while he tracks down the runaway elephant. The rifle unites the narrator and the Burmese psychologically, albeit in different contexts. The narrator was psychologically pressured by the Burmese to shoot the elephant and exhibit his “sahib” omnipotence, while the Burmese are psychologically excited by the spectacle of the narrator killing the elephant and to scavenge the meat and tusks off the dead elephant. At the pull of the trigger, the narrator “heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd”. Once the rifle has been utilized and the elephant shot, everything reverts back to ‘normal’ (the indifference between colonizer and colonized). The indifference is made more explicit with the discussion of the coolie’s death as measured in his economic value (“elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie”) and as legal evidence to give the narrator “sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant”.

I might be pushing this a bit far, but the various steamships in Heart of Darkness, the Patna in Lord Jim, and the trains and cars in A Passage to India seems to provide spaces for the colonizer and colonized to come together?

Shooting an Imperialist…

(I hope all we have to read is "Shooting an Elephant" the short story, rather than the anthology!)

Every time I read "Shooting an Elephant" I find myself hoping it's ironic rather than faithfully autobiographical. If it's the latter, Achebe should switch targets, because for an 'anti-imperialist' text, "Shooting" is sure racist. Perhaps Orwell was aware that serial imperialists could probably be best persuaded to drop the 'white man's burden' by considering that "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys," but the sheer negativity of Orwell's portrayal of the Burmese makes you wonder why his narrator even bothers to mention his imperialist "guilt." For all his anti-imperialism, his words embody the white supremacist's ideology - that "an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie" is reflected well in his respective descriptions of the "preoccupied grandmotherly" animal he hated to shoot, and the "sea of yellow faces above…garish clothes" that "[push]" him "to and fro" like an "absurd puppet," of whom he was "very glad the coolie had been killed."

It reminds me very much of the revisionist case Chatterjee covers, where historians such as Washbrook, ostensibly attempting to "restore the 'Indianness' of this historical narrative and 'recover the subject from European history,'" (30) put forth a history that "can with such ease spirit away the violent intrusion of colonialism and make all of its features the innate property of an indigenous history." (32) Of this and Orwell, as a postcolonial subject I can't help but think, 'if you're on our side, I'd hate to see who's against us.' If we recall that imperialism is, as Chatterjee points out, predicated on the "mark[er of difference [that] is race," (19) in replicating this racist presentation with no recourse, "Shooting" technically replicates too imperialist ideology, and is thus, despite its claims, ultimately a text that testifies to the 'truth and justice' of imperialism.

(P.S. Dr Koh, a thousand - nay, million - apologies for erroneously bothering you about the readings! The corrective email had totally slipped my mind through, er, post-mid-term amnesia doubtlessly fuelled by vain hopes of not having to read another article for my presentation week… *kowtow, kowtow, grovel*)

Shooting an Elephant- a different kind of anti-colonial text

“Shooting an Elephant” is to me an anti-colonial text that is very different from the way Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is anti-imperialist or anti-colonialist. This stems from the fact that Orwell evaluates colonialism from the standpoint of the coloniser and how it affects him adversely, rather than from that of the colonised.

This is evident when it is the Europeans who are targeted by the natives rather than the other way round, as typically depicted in anti-colonial texts. In Chatterjee’s article, she discussed the idea of “colonial difference” and how differences between the cultures of the colonised and coloniser were what legitimised the power and authority of the coloniser. I find it interesting that Orwell depicts the reversal of this situation and shows how it is precisely this difference that causes the European coloniser to be “baited” and mocked at by the natives. This difference, which initially distinguished the Europeans as being superior has now become the very thing that marks their victimisation.

Orwell also evaluates colonialism from the standpoint of the coloniser by showing how colonialism takes freedom away not from the colonised but from the coloniser himself, as evident when the narrator felt compelled to shoot the elephant just to live up to the expectations of the natives. The fact that the narrator could even envision himself as “a puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces” further proves how he has fallen under the control of the colonised peoples, moving solely according to their will. Colonialism, here, deprives the coloniser and not the colonised of freedom. As the narrator says, “when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”.

It is for these reasons that SAE strikes me as very different kind of anti-colonial text.

Powerful Laughter

Far from feeling sadness at the 'black dravidian coolie['s]' death, the elephant's demise, or the police officer's gross misjudgment, I found "Shooting an Elephant" rather funny. Sardonic humour seems to delicately lace the text, affording a story that is more ridiculous than appalling.

Consider the shooting of the elephant. The first shot is anti-climatic, with neither the 'bang' nor 'kick' heard or felt, and the 'knocking down' of the elephant taking 'five seconds'. The elephant is personified as a 'senil[e]' old person 'sagg[ing] flabbily' and 'slobber[ing]', evoking images directly in opposition to concepts of aging gracefully. This denies the elephant a grand, tragic death, but instead turns the affair into a tragicomedy. In addition, laughs are extended to the bumbling police officer whose idiocy is behind this botched shooting. By failing repeatedly to shoot fatally, the officer's attempts to 'struggle' against being 'laughed at' by the crowd are, ironically, futile. Worse, readers are added to the laughing crowd.

What then is the significance of the employment of sardonic humour? Here, Orwell departs from Conrad's formal and serious tone in "Heart of Darkness" where 'the horror' of the imperialist enterprise is revealed as something obviously and overtly terrible. Instead, Orwell's use of sinister comedy allows us to laugh at it in a shifty fashion, and this goes further in critiquing imperialism. Our scornful laughter is more powerful than merely agreeing with 'the horror' in Conrad's text- laughing implicates us in the matter, forcing our subscription and attestation to colonialism's macabre face. The colonial enterprise is then fiercely critiqued for its capitalization on incidental 'pretext[s]' that make them 'legally in the right', while really, all that is craved for is 'solely [the] avoid[ance] of looking a fool'. This, being exposed covertly through the tragicomedic mode, is to me a stronger statement.

(299 Words)