"Shooting an Elephant" Blog

 “Shooting an Elephant” Blog

In the extract from the novel “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, we read about a man who decides to shoot a wild elephant for what seems to be no reason at all. Throughout the whole extract, the man goes into heavy detail about everything going on in the novel for instance his gun or where he decides to shoot the elephant. The novel is structured in a way that is very easy for novice readers to understand and also intricate enough for experienced readers to go in-depth and find a deeper meaning to the text.

The text is from a novel which means that it is in the form of a novel. This helps the reader understand why some things are written in the way that they are throughout the extract. The extract tells the story from the point of view of the man who shot the elephant which puts the whole extract in the first-person perspective, we know this because of the words the author uses like “When I pulled the trigger” the author uses “I”. This means that everything we read is from what the man remembers from the event. The text never goes into detail about whether this is a diary entry written by the man or if it is an essay written from stories about the man. 

The extract from “Shooting an Elephant” is structured in a very easy to understand way with only a couple of paragraphs of varying size and word density. The structure of the extract can help the reader tell what kind of writing or even what kind of form the writing is in just by looking at how the article or extract is structured. For instance, given that the extract is a couple basic paragraphs the reader can almost instantly figure out that this piece could be a novel, an article, or a blog. The way that this piece was structured makes it very easy for the reader to read and the sentence structure is very similar from sentence to sentence.

The language is definitely the most important part about this extract because the language allows the reader to develop context clues about the story and find hidden meanings that lay within the words of the extract. The language used in the extract is very emotional without talking about emotions an example of this is when the man talks about the shot that he let out of the gun to shoot the elephant “When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick- one never does when a shot goes home.” this line shows us very emotive language without having to use emotive words. Theauthor uses this a lot throughout the extract and it really helps give the reader a sense of emotion while reading and helps give the character life through the words that are chosen.  The author also use the modal verbs to help show off language to the reader. Modal verbs are words like should or ought and  the author uses the word ought a lot throughout the extract for example when the author state “It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do.” The word ought in this shows uncertainty and it lets you peer into the characters thoughts as he said this. The author inserted “Ought” in order to show uncertainty about the mans decision to shoot the elephant.

Overall the extract from “Shooting an Elephant” was a really good example of successful uses of language and form and it shows how a great author can make people feel things through their writing especially about the elephant.