Shooting An Elephant by George Orwell

Shooting an Elephant is a short autobiography George Orwell wrote when he was in Burma, serving his country as a police officer. During that time, British imperialized Burma, and so the author was forced to work terrible jobs. He was hated by the people from Burma, and was always teased upon. Even though he was teased and was done severe things from the people, Orwell’s hatred always faced to one, Great Britain’s government. He stated in the story that the job he was doing was something worse than anybody could imagine, and that he finally knew the true colors of the government he served for.

George Orwell, through ‘Shooting an Elephant’, writes his own way of persuasive essay for imperialism and the government at that time.

Shooting an Elephant is a persuasive essay, because the author writes only his opinions and persuades the readers that the government during imperialism wasn’t right. I think he is very good at persuading the readers through his writing because he uses many figurative languages to help the readers understand how he felt at that time. How he started out about how the people there hated him, how he felt pity for the Burmans rather than feeling pride for his government because he did all the dirty works, and he realized the true side of the government. The readers Orwell wanted to focus at was probably the people who did not know what was imperialism and how it was a negative action taken. And I believe that the people who read this text could understand Orwell’s position and got persuaded. Imperialism, to George Orwell’s point of view, is a dirty position to whomever who is actually at the site and is controlling the people.