How Colonizers Compromised Their Freedom as a Result of Limiting the Freedom of Others

Shooting an Elephant
Name
Institution
Shooting an Elephant
The essay “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell describes the dynamics of power between the colonized and the colonizers, through an illustration of his life as a police officer in Burma during the colonial era.
In his point, Orwell tries to explain that despite having power as a colonist, he is still powerless before the colonized. By stating that “…I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind “, he is trying to illustrate how his hands were tied and he did not have a choice, he had to do what the crowd expected of him. Thus, he indicates that having a gun did not necessarily imply that he had all the power and was in control of his freedom. There were other people controlling him, such as the native crowd, and even though they were unarmed, he knew that they would view him as weak if he did not shoot the elephant. This was, however, is not what he wanted to do because he knew, in his bones, that killing an elephant was wrong. This scenario illustrates how he was powerless in the situation and had to do what others expected of him.
The story depicts the dynamics of power in colonialism. The colonized know that the colonizers hold the power but in some way, the colonized also hold some power over the colonizers. Orwell notes that “… every white man’s life in the East was one long struggle not to be laughed at.” This point clearly indicates that the colonized had some level of power over the colonizers, though it was not the kind of power that could benefit them. On the other hand, the kind of power the colonizers had was b...