Sem4 week 9 comment
Comment-
Carmel’s journal and thoughts on “Shooting an Elephant”.
I am interested in how many of us in class feel that Orwell had no choice but to shoot the elephant in the story. I feel that he did, but he sucuumed to the pressure of expectation from the people. Unlike Orwell’s Winston who endured weeks, months of horendous torture before he betrayed his own sense of truth and love for Julia, Orwell himself caved in to an expectation of taunts and a sense of disregard.
The actual description of the elephant being shot and dying slowly is traumatic, it definatly leaves a strong impression. When I was 12, at a property a couple of hours outside of Broken Hill, I saw a Bull being shot in order to be buthchered and eaten. The bull only fell down after 8 bullets were shot into his body, then a final shot between his eyes killed him. Watching him run, then stagger and finally fall while being shot so many times was very unerving. I understood that he was being killed for food, but the bulls own tenacity and refusal to be betten, and the shooters exasperation and mounting anxiety made the situation traumatic for me.
Because of this experience reading “Shooting an Elephant” took on an extra level of visual association.
Franz Marc (1880-1916): Elephant (Elefant), 1907, chalk, Kunsthalle, Hamburg.