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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—Orwell as Puppet:
While a crowd of Burmese locals watches Orwell prepare to kill a rampaging elephant, Orwell pauses the narration of the story and philosophizes about the ways that colonialism harms both colonizer and colonized, using a metaphor in the process:
Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.
Here Orwell metaphorically describes himself as “an absurd puppet pushed to and fro” by the Burmese natives watching him from all sides and expecting him to kill the elephant. He goes on to metaphorically refer to himself as a “hollow, posing dummy” to again communicate how little power or agency he feels he has in this scene (and in his role as a colonial police officer generally).
Orwell’s analysis of why he doesn’t have agency is significant. As he says, “[W]hen the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” What he is trying to communicate here is that colonialism requires both the colonizers and colonized to take on particular roles—or performances—stripping them all of their free will in the process.
Related Themes:
