Elephant blog

  The text overall is about a man shooting an elephant. Throughout the course of this, we hear his thoughts and actions as he shoots the animal. It is a pretty graphic first-person account and the events happen linearly.

    The opening paragraph starts with the writer being convinced that he will shoot the animal. He needs to shoot it and says he “ought to” which is an example of a modal verb. The purpose of this is to convey that he does not want to shoot the animal but he has to. The author ends the first paragraph with the simile, “As much a chance as a toad under a steamroller”, which suggests that the writer had some fear. This simile also helps convey how large the elephant itself is.

The author describes, “The crowd grew still, and a deep, low, happy sigh”, this is said before he shoots the elephant and it adds suspense to the event. However, he also brings up the theatre curtain, meaning that the crowd is there to watch for entertainment. He then talks on, “I did not know then”, w which means that this is his first time doing something like this and he is inexperienced with shooting elephants. After this, he foreshadows the ending when he states, “one would shoot to cut an imaginary car running from ear-hole to ear-hole. "This quote foreshadows the later event of the elephant not dying. This can also be used as an explanation as to why the elephant did not die even after being shot so many times. 

The author's lexical choices give the impression that he feels a sense of remorse for what he has done. After shooting the elephant the author describes the noise as a “devilish roar”. The use of the word devilish here can be seen as the writer feeling remorse. Since the word devil is the spirit of evil. The author feels that what he did is not right and evil. The author shows guilt many times while describing the death. The elephant was described to have, “looked stricken, shrunken, immensely old”, which can be deciphered as the author feeling guilt in the sense that he sees this animal in such a terrible way after it is shot. The guilt continues as the animal struggles to survive. He watched the “Agony of it jolt” and described the elephant as having “Senility”. Overall, he describes the elephant as changing from a normal elephant to being in “Agony” and also being senile which conveys remorse as well.

The form of this text is also important. The author chose to write the events as they occurred. With the events being in chronological order he also wrote in the first person. This makes the text more personal. The first person also changes the mood of the story since we hear the shooter's internal conflict. This draws the reader towards the main character's emotions and gives the story a more somber tone.

The author chose to structure the story in several paragraphs. This adds to the chronological order by spacing the events out. For example in the beginning Orwell talks about how he “ought” to shoot the animal but does not want to. He goes on to speak about the alternative in the next paragraph. After this, he shot the animal. The longer paragraphs also help since he adds a lot of detail to the first-person experience. I like how he ended off the sentence, “In the end, I could not stand it any longer and went away.” This adds suspense to the end and also makes the story seem more dramatic. It is by itself also adds to the dramatic effect but also could be a cliffhanger since Orwell never discloses what ended up happening to the elephant.