Shooting An Elephant.

Forcing myself to sit down and slowly turning the first two pages of the story, tears ran down my face, not for the reason that I was so touched by the story but because it was so boring that I kept yawning and almost fell asleep on my desk. Yet shortly after the police character fired his first shot at the poor elephant that my eyes were wide open, and I came to understand what was taking place in the story.

One..twoÐ'...threeÐ'...fourÐ'...shots were fired through the elephant, and he collapsed gradually. I am not sure how many bullets that unfortunate animal had taken. All that went through my head was just cold, cruel "bang" sounds. As I read this part, strangely enough, I didn't think abt how coward and cruel the police was or how sorry I felt for the elephant but abt family and lost loves.

I looked at the author's picture' he seems as a normal, lanky man in my grandmother's black and white yearbook but I cannot tell how his brain works. Keeping in mind that his short story is a modern literature's work, I wonder what he meant by the title "Shooting an Elephant" Ð'- just plainly what has happened in the story abt a cold-blooded European police and the carnivorous Burmese barbarians who gathered together to kill a giant elephant or actually higher, deeper meanings that are hidden under the surface.

The selfish, narrow-minded police who only cared abt himself is actually our average normal person in reality and the elephant is the one who loves us deeply but is the one whose heart we callously crush into pieces. The elephant can be a mother who loves her son unconditionally no matter how mischievous and rebellious he is. The disobedient, ignorant child grows up, interacts with bad friends, and gets trapped deeply in the dark side without knowing how much his mom loves him. Each time he uses drugs, steals things or gets arrested for robbing the bank, the bullet is shot right through his mother's heart and tearing it out. Each shot is deeper and severer. The pain she has to suffer is just as terrible as the elephant's except that what she feels is emotional not physical. One

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