Shooting an Elephant is an essay by George Orwell in which he described that once he had to shoot an aggressive elephant when he worked as a police officer in Burma. The elephant is the central symbol of the story and it shows how colonialism corrupts the soul. The colonial officer does not want to kill the elephant but he had to do so to satisfy the expectations of his superiors. This essay represents that the soul of policemen is corrupted by their duties as colonial functionaries. He further describes at a policeman becomes someone he isn't which is why people started hating him without knowing him as a person. The real man beneath him does not want to shoot the elephant but the people only saw him as a colonial authority and expected him to shoot the elephant.
This essay exposes the conflict between the law and one's moral conscience as this pertains to British imperialism specifically. As he represented the British law, he had to suffer from the pain of killing an elephant which made him torn with terrible emotions at the sight of the elephant's death. The author narrates that the role of government in people's lives is huge because he had to act within the law and people started respecting him after he shoot the elephant but he was not going to forget about the death that he encountered.
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