Blog 4.4, analysis of and excerpt from "Shooting an Elephant"

 

    This extract from ‘Shooting an Elephant’, by George Orwell, Is set up in a chronological order. The extract starts off with the writer's thoughts and then goes in the order of each event. The first paragraph and the beginning of the second paragraph is the exposition because it is giving background information on the scene. For example, the author writes “I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step.” it sets up the background so that then it could start going to the climax.

    The structure of this extract is in long, detailed paragraphs about the events and the author's thoughts. Unlike similar Cambridge extracts, the thoughts of the author are in the same paragraph as the other events. To end this extract, there is a short sentence which explains the end of the event. In this case, the extract ends by the author walking away from the event. “In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away.”

The overall mood of this extract is grim and gory. The author starts to create the mood when they say in the end of the second paragraph, “Actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.” By saying how they were aiming for the brain, it gives a sense of death due to them aiming to kill the elephant. It also creates a sense of gory and death because in the second to last paragraph, the author describes the bullet wounds as “The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die.” By describing the bullet wound as bleeding thick, and like red velvet, the reader starts to imagine the scenario and it becomes more real for the reader. 

Sorrow and empathy seem to be the tone of this extract. The author goes into a very detailed description of the effect that the bullets had on the elephant. It seems like a memory that the authors could never shake because of the impact it had on him. “The tortured gasps” of the elephant seemed to be to much for the authors because in the very last sentence, he states “In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away.” It seems like the author is full of regret and sorrow. He couldn’t bear to be around the half alive elephant any longer, so he left. Although the tone seems to be more hidden and harder to take apart than the mood, the hidden meanings of the tone create an even deeper feeling of regret and sorrow.   

The author uses many different descriptive words that help develop the mood and tone of the extract. He uses the word “devilish” to describe the cheer from the crowd. Although the crowd is cheering with glee, by using the word “devilish”, the author makes the crowd seem like it is cheering for the wrong reasons. Until that point, it was hard to tell the author's point on shooting the elephant until he makes the crowd seem like they are cheering for something horrible. 

Throughout the extract, the author uses lots of imagery and descriptive words to give a very detailed account of the elephant. He uses words such as “immensely old” and “enormous senility” to describe how the elephant was once it was shot. The grim details of the elephant's “slobbering mouth” and the “agony of it jolting his whole body” paint a grim picture in the reader's mind. There are more details about the elephant's collapse than anyone would want to know. The language usage is so strong in this paragraph that it leaves the reader with a grim and sad mood.