Write a note on George Orwell’s prose style with special reference to his essay ‘Shooting an Elephant’
OR
What is the style of Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant"?
"Good prose" asserts George Orwell
in one of his characteristically vivid similes "is like a window
pane." A window pane allows a clear view through it so long as one
constantly keeps it clean and takes care that no dust or soot settles on its
surface. In a similar way, good prose is expected to give the reader a clear
idea or a vivid image of what is being stated or described. But, in order to
write such prose, the writer must spare no pains to keep his language clear,
lucid and precise. In short he must be a conscious artist who chooses his words
and expressions carefully and never lapses into banalities. In all his
writings, Orwell tried his best to live up to this high ideal of a good writer
of prose. He is a meticulous artist whose concern for the 'right expression'
frequently borders on fastidiousness. The essay Shooting an Elephant, with its
vivid representation of a tense situation, reads very much like an absorbing
running commentary. The compelling effect of his conscious artistry can be
clearly seen in the living description of how he shot the elephant and how the
animal gradually sank to the ground.
His narrative technique is all
his own. His master of narration makes the reader visualise the incident he is
narrating. While reading Shooting an Elephant, we can see before our eyes 'the
sea of yellow faces' eagerly watching the author as they would watch 'a
conjurer about to perform his trick'. And, after the third shot had been fired,
we can see the collapsing elephant towering upwards 'like a huge rock toppling.
But his narration of the incident is now and then punctuated with authorial a
comment which introduces an element of drama into the narrative. Thus the
narrative in Shooting an Elephant is enlivened with an inner drama of absorbing
psychological interest. This drama starts from the moment when the author
realises that he would have to shoot the elephant much against his will. And
this drama culminates in the strikingly pithy observation that the white man's
life in the East is 'one long struggle not to be laughed at’.
This essay does not give us a taste of Orwell's sharp and biting satire which sometimes reminds the reader of Jonathan Swift. But a broad sense of humour pervades the whole essay. And, much like Lamb, Orwell can laugh even at his own cost. In this essay, he does not hesitate to picture himself as an absurd puppet driven by the will of a huge crowd of natives.
Orwell's language is neat, lucid, racy and
graceful. He had an uncanny knack for pithy remarks packed with meaning. His
famous remark in Animal Farm found its way into The Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than
others." In Shooting an Elephant, we come across quite a few such remarks.
Speaking of the dilemma of the white man in the East, he observes: "He
wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.
His similes sometimes make a situation more
clearly visible than a whole page of narration might do. Considering the eventuality
of the elephant charging at him, he says that he would then have as much a
chance 'as a toad under a steam roller'.
All these stylistic features, taken
together, easily make Orwell one of the best writers of English prose. Though
it is chiefly his novels that have earned a permanent place in English
literature, his style, with its strongly individual flavour, appears
particularly suitable for the kind of personal essay of which Shooting an
Elephant remains a typical and admirable example.
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