I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible" (4). Although part of him saw the British Raj as tyrannical, "with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts" (4). Orwell rationalizes his rage saying, "Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism" (4). Orwell realizes that tyrannical imperialism works against both the imperialists and the natives. Orwell abandons his morals and kills the elephant to garner the approval of the Burmans. He feels compelled to shoot the animal because the Burmans "did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching" (6). Orwell speaks of himself when he says "it is the condition of [the imperialist's] rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it" (7). Orwell's story portrays him as suffocating under a mask which he loathes. Orwell presents the pathetic quality of his whole life, and "every white man's life in the East," which "was one long struggle not to be laughed at" (7). Orwell's fears of mockery represent the fears of imperialists of a loss of control. While the British could control the economics and politics of their colonies, they could not control the mockery and disdain of the natives. Of the moment when he faced the elephant, Orwell says, "The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on, and reduced to a grinning corpse." He fears "And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do" (8). Orwell dreads the mockery of the natives more than losing his own life. In "Shooting an Elephant," as Orwell "stood there with the rifle in my hands," he "first grasped the h...
