Shooting An Elephant

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Three messages From Shooting an Elephant Peer Pressure In the story “Shooting an Elephant”, by George Orwell, a white man moved to Burma to be a military policeman. The natives did not have respect for the white man, and they treated him terribly. There are many messages throughout this story to be learned from. Elephants were a major part of the Natives culture, they used the elephants like we use horses and tractors. When an Elephant goes into heat it is extremely dangerous, they need to be locked up and not let loose. This is a story about an Elephant that didn’t know what he was doing wrong and a man who wanted to prove a point to the people of Burma that did not respect him, so the Elephant suffered the price of trying to get him respect from the natives. The three messages from the story are, regret, peer pressure, and wanting to be in charge.…show more content…
He would do anything to get respect from the people that he was trying to look after. The first message is regret, the white man regretted his decision to end the Elephants life to prove his point to the Burmese. After he had shot the poor Elephant, it had not changed how the Burmese felt about the policeman, in ways his actions made them dislike him even more. He regretted the fact that he let others make his decisions for him. He did not think for himself, he regretted his choice of doing what the people wanted, not what he thought was right. Regret is a huge part of this story, it shows how he felt about his decision after what he had

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