Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell Analysis

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“Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behavior, and they are classic excuses.”-Andrew Lansley. People just don't realize how much peer pressure, the desire for peer acclamation, influences them.people work so hard to fit into society or into any group at Abraham Maslow,An american Psychologist, has fitting into a group as part of his hierarchy of human needs.without acceptance,people can develop mental disorders and cannot feel complete in life.therefore,people go to extremes to conform to social situations and groups of people. George Orwell Uses peer Pressure to evoke emotion in the readers of Shooting An elephant. George Orwell was shy and lacked self-confidence as a child. He suffered from bronchitis and the flu all…show more content…
Orwell also writes in “shooting an elephant”,;”i had no intention of shooting the elephant,i had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary.” This proves that peer pressure was stronger than Orwell conscience or keeping his pride.Orwell shot the elephant despite not wanting to because everyone else wanted him to and he didn't want to be criticized for letting the elephant live.This angers the reader because the author didn't have the courage to stand up to the crowd and go with his original plan of just scaring the elephant away.When all the bullets Orwell uses don’t kill the elephant,he decides to leave it to die.this moment devastates the reader because after he shot down the elephant to please a crowd that despised him in the beginning and afterwards anyway,he didn't even have the decency to make sure it didn't suffer any more than it already had.he could have asked the man who gave him the gun advice on where to shoot the elephant or how close he had to stand or found another gun ,anything but leave it for the Burmese people to pick at like vultures .George Orwell states in “shooting an elephant”;And suddenly i realized i had to shoot the elephant after all.The people expected it of me;i could feel two thousand wills pressing me forward,irresistibly” At this point the reader loses all respect for the author.Orwell thinks he needs to kill the elephant to impress people that didn't even like him and are only there to see the elephant die he even quotes “they

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