100. Shooting An Elephant

Wisdom in the Best Books and Films Podcast

Host Jake Baer explores George Orwell's classic short story 'Shooting an Elephant,' set during the British Raj in Burma. The episode examine

Key takeaways

• George Orwell's narrative is based on his real-life experiences as a police officer in Burma.
• The host connects the story to Jonathan Haidt's psychological theory of the 'elephant and the rider' representing emotion and reason.
• The protagonist's decision to shoot the elephant was motivated solely by the fear of being laughed at by a crowd of 2,000 people.
• The story illustrates the 'hollowness' of imperial power, where the ruler becomes a puppet to the expectations of the subjects.
• The death of the elephant is described as an agonizingly slow process that highlights the senselessness of the act.

Main topics

• George Orwell
• Imperialism in Burma
• ,

Notable quotes

When the white man turns tyrant it is... his own freedom that he destroys.

Conclusion

A powerful meditation on how the desire for social validation can lead

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Thank you. Speaker 1 (0:10) Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Wisdom in the Best Books and Films, where we find bite-sized nuggets of truth and use them to become better people. I'm Jake Baer, the host, and this week we are going to be reading a short story by George Orwell called Shooting an Elephant. I really like this short story. It was written in the early 1900s. I can't remember exactly when, but I believe it is based on a true story. George Orwell spent some time in India, and I believe this is something that actually happened while he was there. I could be wrong, though, so, you know, Speaker 2 (0:44) double check me on that one. Speaker 1 (0:49) But it has a lot of really good thoughts on basically thinking about what you would do in a situation before you get into that situation. And he Speaker 2 (0:59) ends Speaker 1 (1:00) up making a somewhat cowardly choice because of peer pressure that he doesn't think is the right choice. And you get to learn some stuff about elephants. But I also thought this was something interesting because I... read this before I read some books by Jonathan Haidt, who is a current kind of psychology type guy that talks a lot in his books about how our emotions are like an elephant and our reason or our logic is like a rider on that elephant and that basically the emotional elephant drives everyone to make their decisions. that the vast majority of people end up doing things because of their emotions, not because of logic or reason. And then they use logic or reason to justify why they ended up doing the things that they did. But he does it in a pretty, I think, kind of pessimistic way. He does say there are some people that maybe use reason a little more. But I think even in his analogy, There are real people in real life who have learned how to guide an elephant to where they want to go. And this story actually gives us a good thought on how even in the must, I don't know how you pronounce it, I think it's must, but elephants have this emotional period where they basically go on a rampage and rage and do things, as you'll hear about in this story. And even in their most crazy times, If they have a master, a mahout, as it's called, that man or that trainer person can come and calm them down, even when they're in an absolute rage. And so I think, to me, it's important that we get a mahout for our emotional elephants. And I would argue that Jesus Christ is the only mahout who can possibly. get us calmed down or help us to make the right decisions even in the must in the rage of our emotions. So listen to this. That's a lot of stuff to get out of it. Obviously, he's not talking about all that, but that's the stuff that I've thought of. As usual, please leave a review wherever you listen. Please subscribe. Please follow us. Subscribe on Substack. More subscriptions on Substack is a great way for us to grow. but also subscribing wherever it is you listen. And share a link with friends and family and coworkers and everybody you know. Here is Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell. In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people. The only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was subdivisional police officer of the town. Speaker 2 (4:06) And in an Speaker 1 (4:06) aimless, petty kind of way, anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot. But if a European woman went through the bazaars alone, somebody would probably spit Petel juice over her dress. As a police officer, I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on a football field and the referee, another Burman, looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end, the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town, and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans. All this was perplexing and upsetting, for at that time, I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing, and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it, the better. Theoretically, and secretly, of course, I was all for the Burmese, and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that, you see the dirty work of empire at close quarters, the wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lockups, the gray cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been bogged with bamboos. All these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt, but I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated, and I had had to think out my problems in utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, and still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.