George Orwell on the Futility of Empire

I would like to take a moment to suggest you pick up a copy of a very old book, A Collection of Essays by George Orwell. Much of the work comes from his early years, including reflections on his childhood in England and his time serving the country in India. One of the more soul crushing but essential essays from the latter period is, “Shooting an Elephant.”

In it, Orwell speaks of an incident where he is summoned to a provincial village to kill a “rogue elephant” who has injured one of the locals, with the beast’s owner nowhere to be found. However, upon his arrival he faces a moral dilemna. The elephant, far from being wild and on a rampage, is a domesticated animal who became angered by taunting, but was now calmly munching some grass, waiting for his owner’s return. A huge crowd had shown up to see the white man shoot the beast, however, and Orwell felt that if he left without doing the deed, he would be shamed in the eyes of the locals, who would then laugh at him and undermine the authority of the Royal forces.

I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the lead actor of the piece; but I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He beomes a sort of hallow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the “natives,” so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant.

The killing takes place and Orwell pays an awful price for it, learning a lesson which he carries forward to the end of his days. The work is from an era so long past that you might find it non-applicable to our modern age. Not so. The work is beautifully crafted and carries a message for us which should apply to any era. If you have some free time this summer, take a walk with Mr. Orwell and let yourself be swept away.