The narrator shot the elephant "solely to avoid looking a fool." After the elephant storms through the bazaar and kills a man, it calms down fairly quickly, and when the narrator, a British colonial policeman (a position Orwell himself held for a time) encounters the beast, it is peacefully munching grass. Still, the Burmese crowd demands the death of the elephant, and expects the narrator to do it. He does not want to, but he really has no choice. In the British Empire, he says, "a white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened." He must kill the animal to maintain appearances for the crowd. Orwell comments on the bitter irony of the situation, one which demonstrates the extent to which imperialism corrupts Great Britain: the crowd, who identify the British with violence and tyrannical behavior, expect the narrator to behave in that way. In this case, that means killing the elephant in order to live up to the expectations of the crowd. Afterwards, his supervisors approve his decision and say he did the right thing. Doing the "right thing" from the empire's standpoint requires people to act contrary to their own sense of right.
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