Q "Shooting an Elephant" analysis and theme response Please read the story here: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/ (Links to an external site.) Analysis Questions: 1. Examine carefully paragraphs 11 and 12, in which Orwell describes the death of the elephant. Is the reader meant to take the passage only literally, or can a case be made that the elephant's death is imbued with symbolic meaning? Explain. 2. Orwell tells us repeatedly that his sympathies are with the Burmese. Yet ye describes them as "evil-spirited little beasts" (para 2). Explain this ambivalence. 3. What does the experience in paragraph 7 ("But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me...") teach Orwell? 4. Do you agree with Orwell's rationalization that under the circumstances he had no choice but to "shoot the elephant" (para 7)? 5. What is your reaction to Orwell's final comment: "I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally i the right and it gave me sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool"? 6. Midway though the essay (para 7), Orwell discloses the significance the event had for him. Why does he disclose it then rather than save it for the conclusion? PreviousNext