Orwell’s recantation of shooting an elephant touches on an interesting example of irony in a power dynamic reversal. One might assume that authority in the British colony of Burma resides in British officials, but to the contrary, Orwell’s account points towards the power of the Burmese people influencing his actions. In this regard, I think there’s an interesting correlation between James Scott’s “Weapons of the Weak” and Orwell’s story because it makes the reader and Orwell cognizant of how ordinary Burmese people conduct their lives while galvanizing subtle change that will eventually rise to the dismantlement of imperial rule. Orwell manifests this concepts in his thoughts of shooting the “mustly” elephant which: “made me (Orwell) vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant — I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary– and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you” (Orwell 2). Orwell’s unsteadiness can be attributed to how he feels coerced by the Burmese people to make the elephant topple by gunshot and demonstrates the power of crowd influence over British colonial rule. Likewise, in the preceding moment before aligning his rifle to shoot the elephant, Orwell has an epiphany where he understood the: “hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd– seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of this yellow faces behind” (Orwell 3). Orwell’s revelation reveals the accumulation of power in the masses, but also undermines the inefficiency and vanity of the British Empire’s fluke to subjugate Burmese to British power — further exhibiting Scott’s theory of slow subversion by the masses.