Concerning the sensory details in Orwell's "Shooting an
Elephant," you can look at the actual killing of the elephant. Emotion is evoked in
this scene by the use of precise and insightful
description. Orwell writes (I'll emboldened the images, or sensory
details):
In
that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the
bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible
change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor
fell, but every line on his body had altered. He looked
suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet
had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed
a long time--it might have been five seconds, I dare say--he sagged
flabbily to his
knees.
Look at
the diction, or word choice, and the
phrasing:
- mysterious,
terrible change - stricken, shrunken, immensely
old - frightful
impact - paralyzed, without knocking him
down - sagged flabbily to his
knees
And notice the
image created by "paralyzed him without knocking him
down." The description, diction, phrasing, imagery all present concrete
details that evoke powerful emotion in the
reader.
And the elephant scene is, of course, central to
Orwell's ideas. He is an outsider forced to do what he doesn't want to do by the crowd
of insiders surrounding him, and his action is loaded with ambiguity concerning
its consequences.
Orwell tries to evoke pity, disgust,
righteous indignation. He wants readers to decide that imperialism destroys both the
colonizers and the colonized.
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