"Shooting an Elephant" is an essay by British writer George Orwell, first published in the literary magazine New Writing in late 1936 and broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 12 October 1948.

The essay describes the experience of the English narrator, possibly Orwell himself, called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant while working as a police officer in Burma.

The story is regarded as a metaphor for colonialism as a whole, and for Orwell's view that "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys".

[2] Orwell spent some of his life in Burma in a position akin to that of the narrator, but the degree to which his account is autobiographical is disputed, with no conclusive evidence to prove it to be fact or fiction.

In a 2022 interview, Orwell's son Richard Blair said he thinks "Shooting an Elephant" is one of the two best essays of his father, together with "A Hanging".

With a strong interest in the lives of the working class, Orwell, born in India to a middle-class family but brought up in Britain, held the post of assistant superintendent in the British Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927.

The Kipling-inspired romance of the Raj had been worn thin by the daily realities of his job in which... he witnessed 'the dirty work of Empire at close quarters'".

Entering one of the poorest quarters, he receives conflicting reports and contemplates leaving since he thinks that the incident is a hoax.

As ruler, he notes that it is his duty to appear resolute, with his word being final: I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.

He states his feelings against the act but submits after comprehending he "had got to shoot the elephant"—illustrates an inherent problem of hegemony: "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys".

[10] The narrator's conscience plagues him greatly as he finds himself trapped between the "hatred of the empire [he] served" and his "rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make [his] job impossible".

[11] In 2015, Shooting an Elephant was adapted into a short film by director Juan Pablo Rothie and Academy Award-nominated writer Alec Sokolow.

No independent account of Orwell's actions has been found, and there was no official record of the incident, which was unusual because of the destruction of valuable property.

[5]: 224–225  Davison also includes in the complete works a news item from the Rangoon Gazette, March 22, 1926, which describes a Major E. C. Kenny shooting an elephant in similar circumstances.

When one biographer questioned Orwell's wife, Sonia Brownell, she replied, "Of course he shot a f--king a [sic] elephant.