So far, I think I am enjoying the rhetorical analysis unit a little too much. Call me a nerd, but I actually enjoy dissecting a piece of literature and analyzing how the author employs specific strategies to convince his or her audience of something. I decided to go with a piece of literature rather than a speech. In literature, the persuasiveness is more subdued. One has to read carefully and consider hidden meanings behind the text to discover the deeper implications of the story. In a speech, everything is more explicit. This is more tangible, but not as exciting in my opinion. I wrote several rhetorical analysis papers junior year, but none in my senior year (I took a film class). So it has been a while since I dove into a text so deeply.

I chose George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant” for my paper. The piece recounts an experience Orwell had in the British-controlled territory of Burma while he worked for the Indian Imperial Police from 1922-1927. Orwell was the sub-divisional police officer for the town of Moulmein when a tame elephant suddenly went wild and trampled people’s homes, possessions, and one unlucky man. The sub-inspector at the police station told Orwell to take care of it. For the rest of the essay, Orwell describes the build-up to shooting the elephant, his hesitation to do so, and the painfully slow process of killing the elephant. Orwell states that “it was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism– the real motives for which despotic governments act” (Orwell, 1).

Orwell wrote “Shooting an Elephant” in 1936, while Britain still controlled Burma. He had quit the Indian Imperial Police in 1927 out of disgust for imperialism and Britain’s disrespect of the natives. Orwell’s purpose in “Shooting an Elephant” is to convince people of the perverting and oppressive nature of imperialism. His audience is the people of Britain.

In my essay, I plan to write about several different strategies with which Orwell achieves his purpose. He employs animal diction, symbolism, imagery, and passive syntax throughout the essay in an attempt to portray imperialism as corrupt machinery which twists the nature of the oppressed and the oppressors alike.