“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.
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I read the text rather differently as you did. In my opinion, the narrator (perhaps interchangeably with Orwell?) only appears to be anti-colonial and anti-imperialist on the surface. He undermines imperialism for the main purposes of upholding it, and humanizing it.
The anti-imperialist comments that the narrator makes are explained thoroughly in your post, so i'll not go into the specifics. However, it is on very dubious accounts that he makes these anti-imperialist statements that I suspect him not being sincere about them.
He plays up the whole sympathize-with-burmese attitude, but undermines it by stating that "I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated". After attacking imperialism, he sums up his intention to kill the Burmese priests by saying in a matter-of-fact way that "Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-indian official, if you can catch him off duty".
The narrator does a pretty good job in describing the revelation of his with regards to imperialism, "I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys". Although it attacks imperialism on the surface, it also expresses a sympathetic view of those caught in imperialism, and this I argue, excuses the tyranny that most colonizers inflict on the natives as a reluctant but inevitable consequence of a collective imperial ideology. So whether the white man likes it or not, he is stuck in this position. This is most evidently shown whent he narrator is reluctant to kill the elephant, but was "coerced" by the sheer pressure of expectations the natives have in him to do so. He also has to uphold the white man's reputation in front of the natives.
Perhaps more explicitly, the cursory and somewhat patronizing treatment of the natives in the story points shares the similarity in Achebe's comment of how the whole Africa functions only as a foil to the petty miseries of a white man.
At the ending, he draws attention to himself, wondering "whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking like a fool". All the previous sympathy for the elephant's death is undermined by this revelation. It goes to show that the white man is self-absorbed and concerned only about his ego.
It is these points that made me feel that Orwell's Shooting an elephant does not quite make the cut as anti-imperialist.
Sorry if its a bit long :)
Check/check plus
Quite thoughtful, Sarah.
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