British Modernism in Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”

Orwell was born in 1903 in Bengal, India and died on January 21, 1950 in London, England (Orwell 1). His father served as a British civil servant in India and sent Orwell to a private school in England where he won a scholarship to Eton, the foremost “public school” in the country. Orwell noticed the difference between his own background and the wealthy background of many of his schoolmates while attending Eton. After leaving school Orwell joined the Imperial Police in Burma. While in service from 1922-1927, he gains a sense of guilt about the British colonies and feels he must have a kind of personal explanation for it. Orwell’s birth name was actually Eric Blair, but upon arriving in England after his service in Burma he changed it to George Orwell as a way to escape his social class position. He soon after moved to Paris, France and begins his first attempts at writing. One of Orwell’s earliest works was an essay about his experiences in Burma as an Imperial Police...