Shooting an Elephant: George Orwell

this reading selection was interesting. Not my favorite piece. This obviously took place in the early nineteen hundreds first because of the time George Orwell lived and secondly the feel and picture you get from the writing. I don't think he should have killed the poor elephant regardless of what the natives had to say. The elephant was peaceful and not hurting anyone at the time he shot at it so why shoot it? At the end of the writing he states "I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool." why should you care what people think about you? especially by the people who have apparently ragged on you for quite some time. To me, if you're going to shoot an elephant you should know the right way to do it instead of letting it slowly die and suffer for an hour and a half and shooting it an extra few times only to put it in more pain than before. As you can tell I do not like animal cruelty and i do not agree at all with this story whether the author wanted to kill the elephant or not, he still did.