“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.”
As the narrator is standing there, looking at the elephant, he realizes that he does not want to kill it. He has the pressure of thousands of people behind him that want the elephant to be shot down. The narrator ties in his current situation with the white men controlling the eastern part of the world. The white men, which are the British, start to control their people. Its the beginning of the British Imperialism. He comes to conclusion that shooting the elephant is pointless because the animal is not harming anybody at the moment. The narrator does not want to be like the British, but he has the pressure of all the people behind him wanting him to destroy the animal. (122) So as the British are destroying back in the east, the narrator shoots the elephant. By doing so he has gained a sense of power, just like the British are doing in England.
melodylittle 
I like how you said the narrator gained a sense of power after he shot the elephant. I think this was a stepping stone for the narrator to realize the true evil of British empire. He was acting as he was expected to act with the elephant but in a deeper meaning. For him the elephant represented a bigger meaning I think. I believe the elephant represented the British empire and when he shot the elephant it showed that he does not support the country he works for and is from.
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Posted by harkib14 | September 5, 2014, 9:22 amIf I understand your post correctly, you are connecting the British conquest to the narrator shooting the elephant. He shot the elephant not only to avoid being like the British, but to avoid looking like a fool in front the “natives”. Pressure does weird things to people like the narrator. If only the British saw destroying the east pointless, like the narrator saw shooting the elephant.
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Posted by joannafass | September 5, 2014, 9:26 am