In Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant, I believe that the power was soundly in the hands of the villagers. This power came from three sources, each different and each affecting the way Orwell treated the elephant situation. The villagers’ first source of power was their size. The large number of onlookers directly pressured the wary Orwell to shoot the elephant. We see this dynamic in Crick’s basic definition of power: the ability of A to get B to do something that B does not want to do. Orwell felt dwarfed in comparison to the crowd and did not want to go against the desires of the “two thousand people” watching him (3). The second source of power came from ethnicity. The crowd members were all Burmese, while Orwell was British. This amplified the insecurity that he explained feeling earlier in the essay. The third source of the villagers’ power came from British imperialism. Orwell explains that the Burmese had a strong disdain toward imperialism and often expressed this anger toward the British that lived in Burma. Even though Orwell was ashamed of this British rule, he was still British and, therefore, a symbol of imperialism. The large presence of cross villagers made Orwell feel guilty and more susceptible to influence. Ultimately, the villagers made Orwell feel small, different, and guilty. It would have been unrealistic to expect Orwell to go against the wishes of the crowd in the presence of all this pressure and frustration.
Introduction to Comparative Politics: Nationalism, Ideology, and State Power
Professor Shervin Malekzadeh
David – I agree with your recognition of the Burmese villagers’ agency. Although the British government established the overlying structure under which both Orwell and the Burmese people operate, the villagers do exercise a will separate from their oppressors’. However, I believe that Orwell’s identity as a white, European male (acting as an extension of the British government) lent him the rational-legal basis that ultimately supported his actions. If shooting the elephant had been unlawful by the Empire’s standards, then I doubt Orwell would’ve executed the elephant as the fear of retribution from his superiors outweighs the sentiments of seemingly inferior individuals. However, I feel like it would be premature to isolate the Imperial influence as more motivating than that of the Burmese people since they also possessed direct influence within the third dimension despite being unable to set the rules of the second..
This is a very interesting point. While I agree with you that the villagers certainly had power over Orwell — it was his want to “avoid looking like a fool” that eventually got him to go against his gut and shoot the elephant — I think that his ethnicity as a white, British European granted him a sense of official power that, at least on the surface, played to his advantage. At the end of the day, Orwell held a position with Imperial Britain, granting him authority over the Burmese people even if it resulted in him being disliked and being made insecure. In choosing to shoot the elephant he also acted knowing that under British law he made the right decision, and if he had chosen to not shoot the elephant, at the expense of his already kind of shitty reputation among the Burmese people, I don’t think that he would have received anything more than unhappy remarks from the Burmese, given that they know not to mess with him due to his ethnicity and role within the British Empire.