Literature
Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell
A young police officer in Burma shoots an elephant he has no wish to kill, because two thousand people expect it: Orwell on the hollowness of empire.
Start reading → Markdown.md ↓Public domain in Canada and Hong Kong, where copyright ends fifty years after the author’s death. It may still be under copyright elsewhere: not for use or redistribution outside Canada or Hong Kong.
- “Shooting an Elephant”, first published in New Writing, no. 2 (Autumn 1936); reading text after the Orwell Foundation.