Should We Shoot?
People usually need to face the pressure from outside and themselves. In many
situations, they need to make different choices by themselves in order to have a better
live. From the article Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell, a famous English writer
and journalist in the 20th century, shot an elephant that was out of control by the peer
pressure conducive to consolidate his authority and impression in people’s minds. In
the other hands, according to another title Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther
King Jr., the most influential activist of the Civil Rights Movement, led the black
people in the United States to against the unjust law and society to strive for equal
treatments for themselves.
In that time, Burma, one of the colony countries of the United Kingdom, was the
place where Orwell served with the Indian Imperial Police. Orwell was just
unimportant one and a target that was sneered by a huge group of people in local, as
he said “In the end the sneering yellow faces of the young men that met me
everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on
my nerves” (George Orwell 425). “For at that time I had already made up my mind
that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of
it the better”(Orwell 425). It reflects that even though Orwell grew up in the
imperialism environment, but he deeply understood its harm to harmonious society
and detested it very much. When Orwell heard that an elephant out of control ran out
from its “home” and ravaged the bazaar, he did not really know what he was supposed
to do. Although Burmese people expected him to do something that they thought was
right, Orwell was still considering shooting the elephant was not necessary and
without conscience, “As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I
ought not to shoot him”(Orwell 427). On the other side, unlike the ancestors of other
ethnic groups in the United States, the ancestors of black people in the U.S. might be
the only group that was not voluntary to come the U.S. Based on this reason, black
people received the less benefits from the federal government than other ethnic groups
and lacked of enough respect from other groups especially white people before their
national hero Martin Luther King Jr. emerged. Because of the Inspiration that Rosa
Parks refused to let the seat to a white person on a segregated bus, King Jr. determined
to destroy the racial discrimination, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
