"Shooting an Elephant" begins with a meditative prelude to the action in which the narrator, who may be presumed to be Orwell, comments on being a colonial policeman in British Burma in the middle of the twentieth century. "I was hated by large numbers of people, "he says, and "anti-European feeling was very bitter." A European woman crossing the market would likely be spat upon and a sub-divisional police officer made an even more inviting target. Once, at a soccer match, a Burmese player deliberately fouled the narrator while the Burmese umpire conveniently looked the other direction and the largely Burmese crowd "yelled with hideous laughter." The narrator understands such hatred and even thinks it justified, but he also confesses that his "greatest joy" at the time would have been to bayonet one of his tormenters.

The action of "Shooting an Elephant" begins when the narrator...