In class, we discussed our reading for homework: "Why I Shot an Elephant" by George Orwell. We talked about why exactly our feeling were from the text.
The (true) story, in a nut shell, describes how a man working for the British police in Burma is "forced"/pressured into killing an elephant that was loose in the village.
I quickly related it to last years reading of "The Lottery" and the idea behind mob mentality. There is this idea of peer pressure because the minute the towns people see him with a gun, they want to see if he will commit to murdering the defenseless animal. He is influenced by the group surrounding him and acts accordingly.
There are also points in which the author seems detached from the piece. He is looking from an above perspective. The author also seems to have a good moral conscious and could be using this text as a way to justify his actions.
A very interesting point was made in the class: In the beginning, the elephant was viewed as the "evil" or "bad" thing while the villagers were the "innocent" ones. By the end of the story, the roles are reversed since the elephant has calmed down while the villagers are now riled up, hoping to see the elephant shot. This shows a sense of irony in the end.
The most important thing we discussed in class was what persona the author was trying to portray. The author makes this "I" a very bigoted, weak character that has a parochial view on life that is done for a specific reason.The author himself is a very political writer: He wrote both "Animal Farm" and "1984". Why did he make such a dislike-able character? Why did he chose to show such a bad side of himself? We were not able to go into much dept in class--In fact, class was over. But it will be continued in tomorrows class.
