Sarah Engelbrecht
Professor Dawn George
English 1301
13 September 2015
Theme of Shooting an Elephant The article “Shooting an Elephant,” by George Orwell seeks to address how imperialism is evil. First, it humiliates the imperialized people, reducing them to inferior status in their own county. Second, it provokes the people into making immoral decisions to maintain their superiority over everyone else. When a white man becomes a tyrant, it is his own freedom that he loses. In Moulmein, in lower Burma, the author is a hated, sub-divisional police officer. One day something happened that helped him understand the real motives for which despotic governments act. He received a phone call, from the sub-inspector at the police station, about a normally tame elephant who starting behaving aggressively and unpredictably. White men are not supposed to be afraid in front of the “natives,” therefore, he goes against his own conscience to protect himself and his fellow imperialists. In the article, Orwell demonstrates how he loses his freedom to prove his intelligence and morals. When he stumbles upon the elephant eating, he refers to it as looking no more dangerous than a cow, and is no longer showing signs of hostility. He strongly believes the elephant’s “must” is declining; therefore, he does not feel the desire to kill it, but he has no choice. He is a man with authorities over the people and cannot allow the others to see him as a weak man. Therefore, his tyrant situation makes him choose to go against is conscious and kill the elephant. Orwell’s decision to kill the elephant caused him to damage his mortality. Once he shot the elephant he noticed it was still breathing, and knew he couldn’t walk away knowing it was still alive. It seemed unethical to see “the beast” laying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die. After the attempt to finish what he started, he walked away because he couldn’t watch the elephants suffering any more. Orwell attempted to justify his actions, by stating “a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owners fails to control it.” For a man was killed by the elephant, he felt it justified his decision to kill the elephant. Mortality should be taken importantly, people are rewarded when they act morally and are punished when they act immorally. Mortality involves what people ought to do, by making right or wrong choices. Often people use excuses to justify their immoral actions because it was their duty. Nonetheless, people don’t feel great about their decision, so they have to find justification in their action. There are times when people are rewarded for their immoral decisions, like in “Shooting an Elephant.” Everyone expected him to shoot the once calm elephant when the elephant became uncontrollable, even though in the end, it no longer seemed threatening. In addition, once the elephant was dead, the people who weren’t happy about it were only that way because the elephant was worth more than the dead man (a Coringhee coolie.) Orwell decided to give the people what they wanted, which ending up taking away his freedom. He wondered if anybody even noticed that he killed the elephant just to keep from looking a fool.

Theme of Only Daughter In the article “Only Daughter,” by Sandra Cisneros, is about a girl who struggles to win her father’s approval and feels isolated because she is the only daughter in her Mexican family. Not only was she the only daughter, but she was the only daughter of a working-class family of nine, six of which were sons. There are several times where she discusses how she felt unimportant, until she finally receives approval. When Cisneros was young, she told her father about her college plans, thankfully he agreed it would be a good idea. However, he only felt it was a good idea because college is good for finding a husband. Furthermore, she felt relieved that her father felt that way, because he wouldn’t care if she majored in “something silly,” like English. According to the article, Cisneros tries her best to chase her dream as an English writer and to have her father recognize her as “My only daughter, the writer.” Not as “This is my daughter. She teaches.” (Cisneros, 1995, P. 6) There were several times when Cisneros’s father would complain or boast that he has seven sons. He would always translate it as having seven sons instead of having seven children, or having six sons and one daughter. In her mind, she felt like she was being erased from by her father; although, she knew he couldn’t mean any harm in saying it that way. Cisneros’s father always believed daughters were meant only for husbands. All she wanted was her father to understand and view her as more than someone meant only for a husband. When her brother graduated medical school, her father couldn’t have acted more proud of his son. She often wondered if she wasted all those years in college because she didn’t marry, and felt maybe it was for nothing. It took her ten years to start receiving money from her books. When her book finally published, including the Spanish version, she flew home so her father could finally comprehend her writing. He couldn’t read English nor was he into reading, unless it was sports or gore magazines. When he became ill, he spent most of his time lying in bed. Once she got to her father's house, she went upstairs to give him the book to read. As he laughed his way through the book, it took him some time to reach the end. Furthermore, the conflict between the two is finally resolved when he is indirectly telling her how proud he is of her, by asking “Where can we get more copies of this for the relatives.” (Cisneros, 1995, P. 6) In the end, she finally received her father’s approval. She was finally respected for the person she truly was and received the opportunity to let her talent shine. Even when she felt unappreciated and rejected, she didn’t give up, and that is the most important thing someone can remember in life. Even if someone feels unappreciated by society and even disregarded because they are the minority, in the end, they will finally be noticed as long as they keep striving forward.