Explain the elephant as a symbol of British Empire in "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell.

The most obvious symbol of empire in "Shooting an Elephant" is the narrator himself, as he is the actual representative of the British Empire in Burma. One could argue, certainly, that the elephant represents the Empire in the 1930s as well. The elephant rampaged through the bazaar, destroying everything in its path, accidentally trampling and killing a coolie in the process. Clearly there are parallels between the destruction wrought by the elephant and that of...

The most obvious symbol of empire in "Shooting an Elephant" is the narrator himself, as he is the actual representative of the British Empire in Burma. One could argue, certainly, that the elephant represents the Empire in the 1930s as well. The elephant rampaged through the bazaar, destroying everything in its path, accidentally trampling and killing a coolie in the process. Clearly there are parallels between the destruction wrought by the elephant and that of the British Empire. However, after Orwell shoots the elephant (under pressure from the angry crowd) he is left to watch as the mighty creature slowly and agonizingly dies. An "enormous senility" came over the elephant, Orwell says. "One could have imagined him thousands of years old". As the narrator describes pouring shot after shot into him to end the ordeal, it is not difficult to imagine that Orwell intends the reader to think of the British Empire, a bloated, dying beast in its own right, waiting, like the elephant, to be torn apart by native peoples that it had terrorized.