I think Sasha makes some good points with regard to the power of the majority and the “shared laugh” concept. Like I alluded to in my own post, while Orwell and the British may have authority over the Burmans, the native people actually have power over the Europeans. This is due in part to both the sheer discrepancy in numbers between the groups and the social obligations that Orwell’s authority entails. However, the two factors are often intertwined. When Orwell is gratuitously fouled in soccer, he is unable to complain because he is outnumbered by the Burmans and because he would appear weak if he were to show his fear, compromising the legitimacy of his authority. Evidently, the extent of Orwell’s authority does not translate to his extent of power in the situation. Meanwhile, despite the power dynamics of Orwell and the Burmans, the concept of the “shared laugh” may be applicable to the bigger picture. While the British exercise their power the Burmans are free to engage in whatever kind of private discourse they like, mostly likely regarding their anti-British sentiment. However, in the public sphere, they are well aware of their position in the Imperialist society. This is made evident after Orwell shoots the elephant and elicits a strong reaction from its owner. “The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing.” This matter-of-fact remark speaks volumes. Even though Orwell lacks power in the story, his authority is still firmly cemented in society.

In Orwell’s account of his experience as a police officer of the British empire in Burma, he uses the experience of shooting a rogue elephant terrorizing the village to highlight the often strange power dynamic between himself, the Burmese people, and the British empire. It is this last pillar of the power dynamic, the English system that has crafted the environment in which both he and the Burmese people reside, that is not explicitly discussed as a participant in Orwell’s account, but nonetheless holds the true power in Orwell’s story. Orwell mentions that “For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better.” (1) While he is in Burma, Orwell is beholden to the British state just as much as the Burmese villagers he presides over, and it is this forced assumption of the role of ruler that pushes Orwell to shoot the elephant in order to not lose face in front of his “subjects.” Orwell himself would rather not be in the position of power that he is in, but his own autonomy is taken away by the empire he represents, just as the empire has taken away the autonomy of the Burmese people. The relationship between Orwell and the villagers is not at all the power dynamic that it seems to be; instead, Orwell is a subject of his empire too.

Orwell in this piece presents his belief that the dominant group has less power than the subordinate, but I do not know that I completely agree. I think that the way in which one determines who has power in Orwell’s situation depends greatly upon one’s definition of power itself. Orwell sees the Burmese people’s “shared laugh,” and their ability to make him act a certain way, to “play the part,” as a sign of their power over him. While this may be so, I tend to view the “shared laugh” as something that keeps the subordinate right where they are; similar to Wedeen’s argument, the “shared laugh” of the Burmese in this case gives them the illusion of some disturbance of Orwell’s authority, but at the end of the day, Orwell still holds the gun, the British Raj remains in power, and the Burmese continue their lives. Furthermore, and perhaps more interesting, while the ability of the Burmese to make Orwell act differently than he wanted to may seem incredibly powerful, it can also be seen as perpetuating the Burmese people’s inferiority; as Demian points out, the English enforce their authority through violence and fear, but isn’t it the Burmese who force the English to act this way? In this case at least, Orwell would not have used violence had he not felt the pressure from the Burmese to do so, yet it is the use of violence that keeps him in the people’s mind as having power. In this way, the Burmese become—as Havel suggests—agents of their own subordination.

– Emily Peckham

There is an aspect of the third dimension of power, the idea that the elite have to compromise with the masses, which is evident in Orwell’s account of shooting an elephant. Orwell succumbed to the pressure of the two thousand natives and killed the elephant despite the fact that they all knew the elephant was peacefully eating and did not deserve to die. Orwell could not, just because he had the rifle, do whatever he wanted. He had to conform to the masses regardless of the fact that he was the one in the supposed position of power. This necessity is quite powerful and arguably the biggest force behind Orwell’s killing of the elephant. He ends his account insisting that he killed the elephant “to avoid looking like a fool”. Orwell didn’t want to appear foolish in front of the natives, meaning the native’s perception of Orwell was important to him and significantly influenced his actions.

In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” there is a dynamic of power that is seemed to be maintained from the account of fear. The British Empire, which Orwell works for, has an authoritative power over the the Burmese. However, there rule and what they do is largely based off the people of which they govern. For example, In “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell is largely concerned of doing what the Burmese want him to do. He does not want to shoot the elephant that seems and appears to be tame, but he knows that if he doesn’t he will seem like a coward to the people he is supposed to be in control of. And how easy is it to overthrow a coward? This anxiety hovering over him even follows him after the shooting of the elephant when he says, “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.” This fear of being seen as less allows the Burmese to have a form of power over the people that are supposed to be in total control.  If the “balance” of power is thrown off then the scales are flipped and the Burmese and the British have a situation where revolt or rebellion could occur.

Orwell’s need to maintain an image of domination in front of his subjects means the Burmese had the power in the account of shooting the elephant. However, this does not translate to the Burmese having significant power in the situation overall – their acts of rebellion did little to undermine the ultimate claim to British authority in Burma.

As an imperial police officer, Orwell was well-positioned to observe what Scott called “weapons of the weak”, the subtle methods the oppressed had to fight back in some measure against those subjugating them. The jeering, tripping, and general ill-reception Orwell was met with in public seem little more than minor irritants, but they made an impression on him, building up into some truly passionate and racially tinged hatred – the Burmese were “evil-spirited little beasts”, the worst of whom he wished to “drive a bayonet into” (Orwell 1). This sets the stage for what comes next: a performance of power where the audience has control, the principal actor helpless to do anything but follow the script they’ve laid out. Orwell “did not want to shoot the elephant” but felt that he must to maintain the facade of control he had over the natives; not doing so would have invited their laughter, a humiliation a “white man in the east” could not bear (Orwell 3). In forcing Orwell to maintain his public performance against his will the natives have power.

Scott addressed this in his piece on public and hidden transcripts. He specifically cites “Shooting the Elephant” and its discussion of the mask of power, how its wearer’s face “grows to fit it” as an example of the power the oppressed have over the oppressors in terms of enforcing a symbolic politics (Orwell 3). However, Scott’s writing makes it clear that there are limits – sometimes unmasking an oppressor as a fraud does not diminish their power. It is most effective when their mask-slip reveals a contradiction to their claim of authority; this does not happen in the case of Orwell. He describes the British as “clamped down” on Burma, implying a rule justified by force and the threat of it (Orwell 1). The humiliation of a British officer, while personally unfortunate, does little to undermine the basis of imperial domination. It is important to remember that the power dynamic seen in “Shooting the Elephant” is not applicable to most other situations in the British occupation of Burma – it’s an uncommon case of the need for a public transcript backfiring on the oppressing class.