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Student Response 2

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Nicky Robertson
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81 views1 page

Student Response 2

Uploaded by

Nicky Robertson
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Holly’s Analysis of Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell

George Orwell’s text is an autobiographical, first-person telling on an account that happened some
time in earlier in his life. This is clear to the reader because of the text being from first person
perspective and being written in past tense, as well as the text itself containing some hints as to
when this took place, as such, “at that age I was...” and “I did not then know that...”.

The extract itself is divided into seven paragraphs, the longest and most detailed of those being the
last two. We see a number of examples of changes in pace and shifts in focus throughout the
extract. In the third paragraph, we see a shift in focus from the present moment to a potential,
metaphorical series of events that have not happened yet. In this paragraph Orwell moves the
reader’s attention away from the scene itself and starts delineating what he “ought to do.”
Then in the following paragraph, the author makes a shift back to the real world.

However, the most conspicuous examples of these structural devices are the last two paragraphs.
The sixth paragraph starts just as Orwell “pulled the trigger” and shot the elephant. An interesting
structural contrast is created here because as soon as this happens, the whole pace of the story
slows down to the point where the reader feels like they are experiencing everything happening in
slow motion, despite the fact that everything Orwell describes must be happening very rapidly. It
seems everything is happening, “in an instant, in too short a time” if you will.

The extract itself is also made up of sentences of varying length, however the large majority of them
are between medium to long and are most notably made up of a number of descriptive adjectives
and model verbs. However, occasionally within the test we find these short, sharp sentences, such
as the first and last sentence of the text. “But I did not want to kill the elephant” – this is a one
clause, declarative, simple sentence that immediately creates this feeling of tension in the overall
story and highlight’s the cognitive dissonance the author is battling with. “In the end I could not
stand it any longer and went away” – again, the same short of powerful sentence is used to wraps
up this part of the extract systematically by showing the reader that while Orwell did decide to shoot
the elephant, there is still a part of him that can’t bare the decision he made.

There are many different types of imagery used throughout the text, particularly in the last two
paragraphs. This again tells the reader that these two paragraphs are important. The elephant being
shot and slowly dying is the crucial part of the story, everything else leading up to that is just a
backstory to explain the circumstances of the situation. “He was breathing...rising and falling” and
“His mouth was...pale pink throat” are both examples of harrowing visual, kinaesthetic and auditory
imagery. In the sentence, “I did not hear the bang or feel the kick,” it is the lack of a description that
creates kinaesthetic and auditory imagery.

Furthermore, in the sixth and seventh paragraph, we can see a lexical field of adjectives, as well as a
sematic field of words like, “weakly”, “sagging”, “great agony”, “painfully”, “dying”, “thick blood”
and “tortured breathing” that are all themed around this idea of weakness and pain.

Overall Orwell uses a number of different, structural devices, shifts in time and pace, as well as the
use of imagery and descriptive language to recall this grim and bloody experience that, clearly based
on his in-depth retelling of the story, must have stayed with him for a long time.

= 614 words

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