Quotes: George Orwell Shooting An Elephant Flashcards
What does Orwell say are every writers four great motivates for writing? Specific quotes
1) “sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death”
2) “aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, in words and their right arrangement”
3) “historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity”
4) “political purpose… desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after”
- “no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude”
- why I write
“I tried, with full consciousness…”
“I tried, with full consciousness to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole”
- why I write
“Looking back through my work…”
“Looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked political purpose that I wrote lifeless”
- Why I write
“His brain still remembered, foresaw - reasoned even about puddles…”
Where is this taken from?
“His brain still remembered, foresaw - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less”
- A hanging
- when writing perhaps discuss the title of the essay - death hangs over the narrative
- also consider it is ‘A’ hanging rather than ‘the’ hanging - suggests that there is nothing particularly special about the man’s death, Orwell is simply peering into society and reporting on one of many examples
“It stopped short, barked, and then…”
It stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood amongst the weeds, looking timorously at us.”
The dog loses its faith in humanity
- A hanging
“We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably…”
“We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away”
- A hanging
“I had already…”
“I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing”
“That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds…”
“That is invariably the case in the east, a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes”
- shooting an elephant
Possibly link to orientalism - distortion of truth to match a European agenda? When he Europeans actually encounter those in the east it becomes clear that there has been confusion
This fear of ridicule is the central motivation that drives Orwell through the story. He’s not afraid of being attacked or physically hurt. He’s afraid of being laughed at. Humiliation is an entirely psychic injury, unlike most other forms of injury. Nothing is lost from humiliation apart from personal pride. While Orwell may theoretically be opposed to his position as a police officer in Burmese society, he is driven to uphold it out of fear of ridicule. When he hears of the elephant rampaging through the bazaar, he feels compelled to show his face, and demonstrate his responsibility.
This fear of ridicule is the central motivation that drives Orwell through the story. He’s not afraid of being attacked or physically hurt. He’s afraid of being laughed at. Humiliation is an entirely psychic injury, unlike most other forms of injury. Nothing is lost from humiliation apart from personal pride. While Orwell may theoretically be opposed to his position as a police officer in Burmese society, he is driven to uphold it out of fear of ridicule. When he hears of the elephant rampaging through the bazaar, he feels compelled to show his face, and demonstrate his responsibility.
