but with the magical rifle in hands I was momentarily worth watching” (“Shooting an Elephant” 7-8). After admitting that he does not want to shoot the elephant, the pressure of the crowd overbears him. He shoots the elephant, describing in vivid detail the agonizing death it suffered, and in the end says, “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool” (“Shooting an Elephant” 12). This essay clearly shows how the pressures of the community forced him to commit an act that he feels to be immoral. Orwell is pressured by the community and highlights the evil that results.Another essay emerging from his experiences with the Burmese, entitled “A Hanging,” shows Orwell’s opinion that the individual is necessary in the community. He portrays his emotions as a witness to and the partial cause of the hanging of a Hindu prisoner. In the story, Orwell writes of his realization that it is wrong for a community to take another man’s life. One of the most powerful passages is after he sees the prisoner sidestep a puddle: “When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle I saw a mystery, the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive…. His brain still reasoned—even about puddles” (qtd. in Lewis 41).Although to Orwell the individual is important in society, he asserts in “Reflections on Gandhi” that an equal community is important as well. He mentions Gandhi’s belief that close friendships and love are not beneficial because the favoring of an individual can interfere with the needs of a community:Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because ‘friends react to one another’ and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Mor...
