The elephant is his "mysterious, terrible change" from a
magnificent animal to a stricken, pain-racked, semi-parlyzed victim is tragic to
Orwell. The visual picture of the elephant as shrunken and "immensely old" almost makes
him symbolic of the British colonialism which is in its waning days. Once powerful, the
elephant sags to his knees as his mouth slobbers pitifully. He seems to have lost his
ability to think with the shot to the head. Orwell writes, "One could have imagined him
thousands of years old."
In an effort to put the large
beast out of its misery, Orwell fires a sencond shot; however, the proud animal attempts
to stand, and does, albeit weakly, with his legs weakening and his head drooping. So,
Orwell shoots a third time:
You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body
and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a
moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward
like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a
tree.
This proud, but
defeated animal trumpets one time--his final cry against death. When he falls over,
Orwell writes that the ground shook where he lay. Then, when Orwell sees that the
elephant is still not dead, he fires where he believes the heart is, but the "tortured
gasps" continue for hours:
He was dying very slowly and in great agony, but
in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him
further.
Indeed, the death of
the mighty elephant is a most brutal, yet poignant experience for Orwell as he senses
the pathos of this dying creature of Nature as he narrates, then reflects. By contrast,
after he leaves, the Burmese people strip it almost to the bones. The clash of the
personal, ethical culture of Westerner with his institutional culture is apparent in
the shooting of the elephant. For, Orwell's feelings that the elephant is a simple
victim are counter to his duties as a colonial policeman.
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