In his work entitled
Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell is a subdivision police officer in an aimless and petty way in Lower Burma. He and the other Europeans were hated by large number of people. For instance, if a European woman went trough the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. One day a nimble Burman tripped Orwell up on the football field and the referee looked at the other way, crowd yelled him with hideous laughter. Anti-European feeling was very bitter; as a result, such incident occur every English man in the East every next day.
He decided that Imperialism was evil thing and sooner he chucked up his job. He was all for Burmese and all against the British. But he can not do anything for them, he was young and ill-educated and he had to think out his problem in the utter silence like every English man in the East. He was stuck between his problems and hatred of empire. How can we understand that it is true for Orwell? As he mentions, sometimes Burmese insult him but he did not do anything to them at least not kill them. He could do so for any reason.
One day an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. They were asking for help him to do something. He says that he did not know what he could do. He was a policeman however he does not know what to do? Because their job was to just stay over there and show up as a white British soldier. He found the elephant and started to think what he should do? He had no intention to shoot the elephant since it values more than any damn coolie. But there was a bunch of people who wanted to kill the elephant and get some meat for the meal. Orwell as a main character has to decide what to do besides he decided to kill the elephant.
Afterwards, there was an endless discussion about the shooting an elephant. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said that he is right; on the other hand, the younger men said that it is a damn shame. The owner could not say anything since he was an Indian and could do nothing. Orwell thinks that he did the right thing because a mad elephant has to be killed, if the owner fails to control it. But end of his writing he says the following that: “I often wonder is there anything that I had done it just to avoid looking a fool.” Obviously, Orwell is inconsistent here.
David Sedaris, in
Me Talk Pretty One Day, is forty one years old. He’s moved to Paris with hopes of learning the language. He took a French class before leaving the New York and spent a few summer in the northern France so he was not in the dark at all. It gave me an idea that it was very important for him to learn French, so he was a little nervous first day of the school. He went to school early in the first day. Regardless of student’s nationalities, everyone spoke in what sounded to him like excellent French.
He felt himself different than the other students who were all young, attractive and well dressed. Also he knew that he’d be expected to perform what he knows in the class by the teacher. The teacher was elucidating administrative announcements. Sound was not unusual for him, yet he assumed that he understood only half of what the teacher was saying.
His teacher started with the French alphabet; “All right, who knows the alphabet” she asked. It was startling for Sedaris as a student who knows a little French. He realized that he did not know how to pronounce letters yet he knew what they look like. It was a David’s turn. He already made his effortless list; his detest and his love nevertheless he mispronounced IBM and assigned the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the typewriter. The teacher’s reaction was like the worst crime that he made.
It was unusual for Sedaris. He thought this was the stupid thing and also what kind of teacher is she? It looks; this was the cultural shock for him. One day his teacher said that “I hate you” with flawless English. That made Sedaris ambitious. He studied French 24/7. While he was learning French and he started to catch his mistakes than the earlier time. He convinced that everything that he said was wrong. If someone asked him a question, He pretended to be deaf.
Over time it became impossible to believe that any of them would ever improve. One day again the teacher single him out, said “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section” and he realized that he understands every single word that teacher was saying. It was a great joy for him so that he responded, “I know the thing that you speak exact now. Talk me more, you, plus, please, plus.”
Understanding does not mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It is a tiny step, nothing more. I would say it is the most important step. When you understand you improve your language that motives you more than anything.
Linda Hogan, in
Dwellings, tells the intertwined story of her life and Native American history. She explains a spiritual history of the living world. She starts her writing with “Not far from where I live...” She portrays place where she lived. She continues with “… the Anasazi left behind when they vanished mysteriously centuries ago.”
She elucidated bees like human workers, “in and out through the holes, back and forth between daylight. They were flying an invisible map through air and circling story they told one another about the direction of food”. She belonged there. She daydreamed of living in a place like the old times. She wanted to be room apart from others, a hidden cabin to rest in. She wanted to be in a redwood forest with trees so tall the owls called out in the daytime. For her it is a perfect world for staying out of cold winter, for escaping the noise of living. How often she wanted to escape to a wilderness where human hand has not been reach. But those were only dreams of peace, a sanctuary where a dream or life would not be invaded.
She told us the story of her dream. One day a man moved into cave that could only reached by climbing down a rope. He lived there like a cave dweller. Everything was good until he felt lonely. He went to the town and found a wife. She climbed down the rope along with him. She as a woman wanted to organize everything in order. Therefore they built a door. Because of the closed entryway, the temperature changed. They had to put in heat. Then the inner moisture of earth warped the door, as a result they had to have air conditioning, and after that the earth wanted to go about life in its own way and it didn’t give in to the people.
She works at a rehabilitation facility for birds of prey. She was raking the gravel floor of a flight cage. There were two fetal mice on the ground. There were listening to the first sounds of earth. But the ants were biting them. She dipped them in the water, and let the ants fall in the pail. She was trading one life for another. But she hated that they had not yet grown to a life, and already they faced the miserable world of pain. Death and life feed each other. The whole world was a nest, on its humble tilt, in the maze of the universe, holding us.
Virginia Woolf’s
The Death of the Moth published after her suicide. In other word, this essay is her first draft but it is as delicious as the last draft. The last draft would be a little different than this but surely not much better writing.
She starts with moths. The moths are neither gay like butterflies nor sobre like their own species. It was mid-September. The rooks were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops. The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the windowpane. She watched him cautiously. The moth was little or nothing but life.
After time, the moth tired by dancing apparently. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. The helplessness of his attitude roused her. She laid the pencil down. It was useless to try to do anything. Nothing she knew had any chance against death. The struggle was over. The insignificant small creature now knew death. The Moth seemed to say, “Death is stronger then I am”.
