Dominion as doublespeak

So you have conquered half the known world and the sun never sets on your empire. You have shown your European contemporaries that you are the biggest kid on the block, you are king of this hill, and that in the great land-grab that was colonial expansion your navies earned you a formidable victory. But what next? How do you maintain this dominion, how do you govern peoples who could not care less which flavor of “white man” claimed ownership of them? Is it possible that you’re in way over your head, that your personnel are stretched far too thin, and soon enough the risk exists that you will look to all the world a fool for biting off more than you could chew? For all their military hegemony, for all their cultural hegemony, for all their perceived dominion over the lesser tribes of Eastasia, the colonial English were nothing but play-actors trying to convince themselves and those around them of their own moral and cultural superiority.

George Orwell seems anything but a violent man. This is made evident primarily in his reluctance to slaughter an elephant whose hormones sent it on a rather destructive rampage, but whom Orwell “did not in the least want to shoot” (525)¹. He makes a myriad of excuses to explain away a sentiment which might be perceived as cowardice, explaining the investment of the owner in the animal’s health (526)¹, the peacefulness and “grandmotherly” nature with which the elephant was grazing (526)¹, and the possibility that the dangerous period of “must” which had once possessed the beast had subsided (526–7)¹. Orwell makes it painfully obvious that he has no desire to end the life of a massive animal like the elephant, and yet he ends up doing it anyway in spectacular fashion.

“In reality,” says Orwell, “I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by those yellow faces behind” (526)¹. For fear of “looking a fool” (528)¹ in front of the crowd of natives flanking him, Orwell shoots the elephant thrice in the head, at least twice in the heart and a couple of mentioned times down the throat – a fair dose of overcompensation which even runs him out of ammunition and forces him to switch armaments (527–8)¹. He does all this for the entertainment – or, more aptly, the appeasement – of the crowd, but also to secure in both his mind and theirs his position of power and authority within the English-constructed puppet society. He fills the role he’s expected to fill – “he wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it” (526)¹ – he’s the white man, the decision maker, and he’ll be damned if he allows the natives to sense his weakness. So he shoots a defenseless animal a dozen times with an elephant rifle.

Orwell’s empathy isn’t exclusive to pack animals, however, as he delivers a poetic and haunting reminder of a prisoner’s humanity in “A Hanging.” “Till that moment,” he tells us, “I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man” (519)². He continues to elaborate on the various bodily processes the doomed man’s anatomy futilely performs until the nanosecond before ceasing altogether, and he delivers one of the more moving indictments of capital punishment put to press. It’s clear Orwell appreciates the gravity of the situation at hand, removing permanently “one world” from this Earth (519)², but why doesn’t he do anything about it? Why doesn’t he resist, or at the very least refuse to participate in, this meaningless power display?

For that reason exactly, that this hanging is indeed merely a display of colonial power. They execute this “brown back[ed]” (519)² native of questionable innocence for the benefit of the other native onlookers, simply to affirm their European cultural dominance through the imposition of their legal system. Every action undertaken by white men in both stories was orchestrated to reinforce their legal, ethical, and cultural authority and prevent them from appearing foolish to the natives under their rule. This homegrown fear of derision assures that the English are not really the ones in control in Eastasia, but instead that they are puppets at the whims of the native people who surround them, constantly manipulating their actions to prevent foolishness and assuage ridicule. They think themselves governors, but find themselves mere children struggling in vein to live up to expectations set by their superiors, by their society, and by the very natives they consider under their control.