The art of telling a story is based on the language used. Whether a writer is good at using language appropriately is vital to an interesting and impressive story. So, how can the use of appropriate language influence the entire narrative of a story? George Orwell, one of the most famous English authors, was born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, India, in 1903. His father was a colonial official for the British and his mother's family also had colonial connections. In 1922, Orwell worked for five years as a British imperial policeman in Burma, but eventually returned to England again because he recognized the injustices of British imperial rule in Burma and could no longer bear the guilt of oppressing the Burmese. Subsequently, Orwell spent the next twenty years as a writer; the essay “Shooting an Elephant,” set in 1920s Burma and written in 1936, is one of his most famous works. At the beginning of the 20th century, Burma was still a British colony, but anti-imperialist protests and social movements developed very rapidly, causing “great tension between Burmese, Indians and English, between civilians and the police” (Meyers 56). Orwell's essay “Shooting the Elephant” builds on this historical tension. In this essay, Orwell describes an older narrator recounting his imperial policeman's experience in killing an escaped elephant that destroyed a market and killed an Indian man in Burma. Throughout the story, Orwell carefully chooses language to develop his narrative to help readers explore the emotional struggle of a young imperial officer. First, Orwell begins his story with the frequent use of carefully chosen diction to indicate the young policeman's hatred and also sympathy towards the Burmese. When he describes it he has always been “an ob...... middle of paper ......te even feel lucky that someone's death can free him from responsibility for killing the elephant. But this naive voice can increase the old narrator's credibility because readers can sense his sincerity; he is willing to admit that his younger self actually felt a little lucky to be out of punishment because of the elephant that had killed an Indian man at the time. He convinces the reader to believe what the narrator ultimately claims: as an imperial officer, he must do what the natives expect of him to conform to his "conventionalized figure of the sahib" (Orwell 95), which is to "avoid looking foolish ” (Orwell 99) in front of the natives. Overall, in this essay, Orwell uses effective language to make his narration of the story more impressive and thoughtful, and to explore an imperial officer's struggle between his good nature and the its imperial role.