Perspectives

Literary period

George Orwell wrote during the time Modernism was the dominant literary movement. Modernist fiction often explores political aspects such as war, authoritarian regimes, or freedom. “Shooting an Elephant” complies with this aspect of modernist fiction: it criticises the British Empire and its violent way of imposing its dominance.

Modernist literature also focuses on the way in which a main character struggles with an inner conflict, a feature that can also be applied to the narrator in the story who struggles with his conflicting conscience.  This is also in line with a related feature of modernism, namely the belief that there is no absolute truth and things are relative. This is illustrated by the fact that the narrator despises both the empire and locals and does not believe either side is right or perfe...