In "Shooting an Elephant," a mutual hatred exists between the Burmese people and George Orwell, a colonial police officer. The Burmese often humiliate and mock Orwell, as he tells the reader:
When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.
Despite his treatment, however, Orwell feels sympathetic towards the Burmese people. They are a colonized people, forced to...
In "Shooting an Elephant," a mutual hatred exists between the Burmese people and George Orwell, a colonial police officer. The Burmese often humiliate and mock Orwell, as he tells the reader:
When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.
Despite his treatment, however, Orwell feels sympathetic towards the Burmese people. They are a colonized people, forced to accept British rule and routinely subjected to brutal treatment. Orwell witnesses this firsthand and briefly describes it in the text:
The wretched prisoners, huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts.
This creates a sense of internal conflict for Orwell because as much as he hates the way he is treated, he cannot accept the subjugation of the Burmese people as fair or humane. It is his own internal sense of justice, then, which creates this conflict. He cannot conceal his anti-imperial sentiments from his own self and this will eventually prompt him to leave the service and get out of Burma.
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