Defining Moment Essay

          We humans are nowhere near perfection. We make constant mistakes that either lead to failure or a defining moment in our lives. A defining moment is a moment in a person’s life that alters who they are. Everyone ends up having a defining moment some point or another in their life. These moments make us who we are today and stay with us as long as we live.

          George Orwell’s story, Shooting an Elephant, Orwell tells the audience about the time he was stuck in a position of shooting an animal based upon the native’s point of view of the creature or his. Orwell begins his story explaining to the audience how much he disliked being an officer because of how the natives viewed him. The natives hated Orwell because he was an officer for the British Empire that took control of the native’s village in India. It isn’t till a rouge elephant gets loose and starts destroying villages that the natives look to Orwell for help. As Orwell is tracking the where-about of the elephant, he contemplates whether or not to shoot the elephant because its only destroying villages because its scared; however, if Orwell doesn’t shoot the elephant, he knows that the natives will view him as a weak white man. It isn’t till Orwell come across a dead native, killed by the elephant, that he finally decides that he has to shoot the elephant. When Orwell comes across the elephant, he takes the rifle and shoots the elephant multiple times before it finally dies. As Orwell is walking away, however, he says that he was glad that the elephant had killed that one native because if the elephant hadn’t, then Orwell would’ve felt bad killing the animal. Orwell ends his story explaining how horrible he felt killing the beast because when it was away from the villages, the elephant was perfectly fine. Orwell promotes this story as his defining moment in his life.

       Orwell’s meaning behind his Shooting an Elephant story was that people shouldn’t let the government oppress them. After experiencing his defining moment in his life, Orwell continued to explain to everyone that the government is always watching, and will continue to watch over us, even in the future. Orwell believed that we humans are never truly free from government control. In his documentary, A Life in Pictures, Orwell described the government as a “boot stomping on a human face.” In the documentary, Orwell goes on to talk about how the shooting of the elephant really changed him. He said that he knew he had to shoot the elephant, but he wished that he didn’t have to do under the pressure of everyone around him (George). The reason why he wrote about the shooting was because the shooting changed the way he looked the world around him.

       George Orwell was a major writer during his time, and still is one of the most influenced writers out there. If anyone were to learn a thing from George Orwell, it would be to not let the government oppress them. As Orwell said in the documentary, “don’t let it happen, it depends on you.” What Orwell meant by that saying was that people need to stand up, and not let the government be the ones to control them.

 

 

                                                      Works Cited

Orwell, George. "Shooting an Elephant." The Literature Network. Web. 14 July 2016.

George Orwell - A Life in Pictures. Perf. George Orwell. A Final Warning from George Orwell. YouTube, 5 June 2011. Web. 24 July 2016.