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Supplemental Material for Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

1 Table of Contents

The Victorian Period: “Victorian Imperialism” 3-4

“Race and Victorian Science” By: Edward Tylor 5-6

“The True Conception of Empire” By: Joseph Chamberlain 7-8

Rudyard Kipling Biography: 9 “The White Man’s Burden”: 9-10 “Gunga Din”: 11-12 “The Mark of the Beast”: 13-24

“Shooting an Elephant” By: George Orwell 25-29

“The Hollow Men” By: T.S. Eliot 30-33

Notes on “The Hollow Men” 34-40

2 3 Great Britain during Victoria's reign was not just a powerful island nation. It was the center of a global empire that fostered British contact with a wide variety of other cultures, though the exchange was usually an uneven one. By the end of the nineteenth century, nearly one-quarter of the earth's land surface was part of the British Empire, and more than 400 million people were governed from Great Britain, however nominally. An incomplete list of British colonies and quasi-colonies in 1901 would include Australia, British Guiana (now Guyana), Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Egypt, Gambia, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Hong Kong, British India (now Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Ireland, Kenya, Malawi, the Malay States (Malaysia), Malta, Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somaliland (Somalia), South Africa, the Sudan, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and Trinidad and Tobago. Queen Victoria's far-flung empire was a truly heterogenous entity, governed by heterogenous practices. It included Crown Colonies like Jamaica, ruled from Britain, and protectorates like Uganda, which had relinquished only partial sovereignty to Britain. Ireland was a sort of internal colony whose demands for home rule were alternately entertained and discounted. India had started the century under the control of the East India Company, but was directly ruled from Britain after the 1857 Indian Mutiny (the first Indian war of independence), and Victoria was crowned Empress of India in 1877. Colonies like Canada and Australia with substantial European populations had become virtually self-governing by the end of the century and were increasingly considered near-equal partners in the imperial project. By contrast, colonies and protectorates with large indigenous populations like Sierra Leone, or with large transplanted populations of ex-slaves and non- European laborers like Trinidad, would not gain autonomy until the twentieth century. As Joseph Chamberlain notes in The True Conception of Empire, the catastrophic loss of the American colonies had given rise to a certain disenchantment with empire- building. But despite a relative lack of interest in the British imperial project during the early nineteenth century, the Empire continued to grow, acquiring a number of new territories as well as greatly expanding its colonies in Canada and Australia and steadily pushing its way across the Indian subcontinent. A far more rapid expansion took place between 1870 and 1900, three decades that witnessed a new attitude towards and practice of empire-building known as the new imperialism and which would continue until World War I. During this period Britain was involved in fierce competition for new territories with its European rivals, particularly in Africa. It was becoming increasingly invested, imaginatively and ideologically, in the idea of empire. It found itself more and more dependent on a global economy and committed to finding (and forcing) new trading partners, including what we might call virtual colonies, nations that were not officially part of the Empire but were economically in thrall to powerful Great Britain. All of these motives helped fuel the new imperialism. British expansion was not allowed to progress unchallenged — the Empire went to war with the Ashanti, the Zulus, and the Boers, to name a few, and critics like J. J. Thomas and John Atkinson Hobson (NAEL 8, 2.1632-34) denounced imperialism as a corrupt and debasing enterprise — but it progressed at an astonishing pace nonetheless.

4 The distinction between imperialism and colonialism is difficult to pin down, because the two activities can seem indistinguishable at times. Roughly speaking, imperialism involves the claiming and exploiting of territories outside of ones own national boundaries for a variety of motives. For instance, Great Britain seized territories in order to increase its own holdings and enhance its prestige, to secure trade routes, to obtain raw materials such as sugar, spices, tea, tin, and rubber, and to procure a market for its own goods. Colonialism involves the settling of those territories and the transformation — the Victorians would have said reformation — of the social structure, culture, government, and economy of the people found there. Thomas Babington Macaulay's "Minute on Indian Education" gives us a good sense of this kind of interventionist colonialism at work. The Empire did not found colonies in all of its possessions, nor were colony populations necessarily interested in anglicizing the indigenous peoples they shared space with, as is clear from Anthony Trollope's dismissive assessment of the Australian aborigines. But in general Great Britain was able to justify its expansion into other peoples lands by claiming a civilizing mission based on its own moral, racial, and national superiority. As we see from the selections by Edward Tylor and Benjamin Kidd, late- Victorian science sought to prove that non-Europeans were less evolved, biologically and culturally, and thus unable properly to govern themselves or develop their own territories. Other writers like W. Winwood Reade and Richard Marsh described the imperfectly evolved colonial subjects as fearsome cannibals and beasts, hardly human at all. Thus they were patently in need of taming, and taking on this job was "The White Man's Burden" in Rudyard Kiplings famous phrase.

Race and Victorian Science Edward Tylor, from Primitive Culture (1871)

5 Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) was an important figure in establishing anthropology's place among the human sciences. Tylor, who specialized in primitive religion, was a professor and museum curator at Oxford University.

In carrying on the great task of rational ethnography, the investigation of the causes which have produced the phenomena of culture, and of the laws to which they are subordinate, it is desirable to work out as systematically as possible a scheme of evolution of this culture along its many lines. In the following chapter, on the Development of Culture, an attempt is made to sketch a theoretical course of civilization among mankind, such as appears on the whole most accordant with the evidence. By comparing the various stages of civilization among races known to history, with the aid of archaeological inference from the remains of prehistoric tribes, it seems possible to judge in a rough way of an early general condition of man, which from our point of view is to be regarded as a primitive condition, whatever yet earlier state may in reality have lain behind it. This hypothetical primitive condition corresponds in a considerable degree to that of modern savage tribes, who, in spite of their difference and distance, have in common certain elements of civilization, which seem remains of an early state of the human race at large. If this hypothesis be true, then, notwithstanding the continual interference of degeneration, the main tendency of culture from primaeval up to modern times has been from savagery towards civilization. On the problem of this relation of savage to civilized life, almost every one of the thousands of facts discussed in the succeeding chapters has its direct bearing. Survival in Culture, placing all along the course of advancing civilization way-marks full of meaning to those who can decipher their signs, even now sets up in our midst primaeval monuments of barbaric thought and life. Its investigation tells strongly in favour of the view that the European may find among the Greenlanders or Maoris many a trait for reconstructing the picture of his own primitive ancestors...... In taking up the problem of the development of culture as a branch of ethnological research, a first proceeding is to obtain a means of measurement. Seeking something like a definite line along which to reckon progression and retrogression in civilization, we may apparently find it best in the classification of real tribes and nations, past and present. Civilization actually existing among mankind in different grades, we are enabled to estimate and compare it by positive examples. The educated world of Europe and America practically sets a standard by simply placing its own nations at one end of the social series and savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind between those limits according as they correspond more closely to savage or to cultured life. The principal criteria of classification are the absence or presence, high or low development, of the industrial arts, especially metal-working, manufacture of implements and vessels, agriculture, architecture, &c., the extent of scientific knowledge, the definiteness of moral principles, the condition of religious belief and ceremony, the degree of social and political organization, and so forth. Thus, on the definite basis of compared facts, ethnographers are able to set up at least a rough scale of civilization. Few would dispute that the following races are arranged rightly in order of culture: — Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian...... [T]he pictures drawn by some travellers of savagery as a kind of paradisiacal state may be taken too exclusively from the bright side. . . . Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far looser and weaker than ours. We may, I think, apply the often-repeated comparison of savages to children as fairly to their moral as to their intellectual condition. The better savage social life seems in but unstable equilibrium, liable to be easily upset by a touch of distress, temptation, or violence, and then it becomes the worse savage life, which we know by so many

6 dismal and hideous examples. Altogether, it may be admitted that some rude tribes lead a life to be envied by some barbarous races, and even by the outcasts of higher nations. But that any known savage tribe would not be improved by judicious civilization, is a proposition which no moralist would dare to make; while the general tenour of the evidence goes far to justify the view that on the whole the civilized man is not only wiser and more capable than the savage, but also better and happier, and that the barbarian stands between...... Arrest and decline in civilization are to recognized as among the more frequent and powerful operations of national life. That knowledge, arts, and institutions should decay in certain districts, that peoples once progressive should lag behind and be passed by advancing neighbours, that sometimes even societies of men should recede into rudeness and misery — all these are phenomena with which modern history is familiar. In judging of the relation of the lower to higher stages of civilization, it is essential to gain some idea how far it may have been affected by such degeneration. What kind of evidence can direct observation and history give as to the degradation of men from a civilized condition towards that of savagery? In our great cities, the so-called "dangerous classes" are sunk in hideous misery and of depravity. If we have to strike a balance between the Papuans of New Caledonia and the communities of European beggars and thieves, we may sadly acknowledge that we have in our midst something worse than savagery. But it is not savagery; it is broken-down civilization. Negatively, the inmates of a Whitechapel casual ward and of a Hottentot kraal agree in their want of the knowledge and virtue of the higher culture. But positively, their mental and moral characteristics are utterly different. Thus, the savage life is essentially devoted to gaining subsistence from nature, which is just what the proletarian life is not. Their relations to civilized life — the one of independence, the other of dependence — are absolutely opposite. To my mind the popular phrases about "city savages" and "street Arabs" seem like comparing a ruined house to a builder's yard.

7 Joseph Chamberlain, from "The True Conception of Empire" (1897) Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) was a manufacturer who made his fortune at age thirty-eight and spent the rest of his life in politics, mostly allying himself with radical causes. He became colonial secretary in 1895, and was an enthusiastic promoter of imperial expansion and consolidation.

IV. The Unionist Alliance: Speeches mainly foreign and colonial — Continued

The True Conception of Empire At the Annual Royal Colonial Institute Dinner, Hotel Metropole, March 31, 1897

* * *

It seems to me that there are three distinct stages in our Imperial history. We began to be, and we ultimately became a great Imperial power in the eighteenth century, but, during the greater part of that time, the colonies were regarded, not only by us, but by every European power that possessed them, as possessions valuable in proportion to the pecuniary advantage which they brought to the mother country, which, under that order of ideas, was not truly a mother at all, but appeared rather in the light of a grasping and absentee landlord desiring to take from his tenants the utmost rents he could exact. The colonies were valued and maintained because it was thought that they would be a source of profit — of direct profit — to the mother country.

That was the first stage, and when we were rudely awakened by the War of Independence in America from this dream that the colonies could be held for our profit alone, the second chapter was entered upon, and public opinion seems then to have drifted to the opposite extreme; and, because the colonies were no longer a source of revenue, it seems to have been believed and argued by many people that their separation from us was only a matter of time, and that that separation should be desired and encouraged lest haply they might prove an encumbrance and a source of weakness.

* * * [W]e have now reached the third stage in our history, and the true conception of our Empire.

What is that conception? As regards the self-governing colonies we no longer talk of them as dependencies. The sense of possession has given place to the sentiment of kinship. We think and speak of them as part of ourselves, as part of the British Empire, united to us, although they may be dispersed throughout the world, by ties of kindred, of religion, of history, and of language, and joined to us by the seas that formerly seemed to divide us.

But the British Empire is not confined to the self-governing colonies and the United Kingdom. It includes a much greater area, a much more numerous population in tropical climes, where no considerable European settlement is possible, and where the native population must always vastly outnumber the white inhabitants; and in these cases also the same change has come over the Imperial idea. Here also the sense of possession has given place to a different sentiment — the sense of obligation. We feel now that our rule over these territories can only be justified if we can show that it adds to the happiness and prosperity of the people, and I maintain that our rule does, and has, brought security and I maintain that our rule does, and has, brought security and peace and comparative prosperity to countries that never knew these blessings before. In carrying out this work of civilization we are fulfilling what I believe to be our national mission, and we are finding scope for the exercise of these faculties and qualities which have 8 made of us a great governing race. I do not say that our success has been perfect in every case, I do not say that all our methods have been beyond reproach; but I do say that in almost every instance in which the rule of the Queen has been established and the great Pas Britannica has been enforced, there has come with it greater security to life and property, and a material improvement in the condition of the bulk of the population. No doubt, in the first instance, when these conquests have been made, there has been bloodshed, there has been loss of life among the native populations, loss of still more precious lives among those who have been sent out to bring these countries into some kind of disciplined order, but it must be remembered that that is the condition of the mission we have to fulfill. * * *

* * *You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs; you cannot destroy the practices of barbarism, of slavery, of superstition, which for centuries have desolated the interior of Africa, without the use of force; but if you will fairly contrast the gain to humanity with the price which we are bound to pay for it, I think you may well rejoice in the result of such expeditions as those which have been recently conducted with such signal success in Nyassaland, Ashanti, Benin, and Nupé — expeditions which may have, and indeed have, cost valuable lives, but as to which we may rest assured that for one life lost a hundred will be gained, and the cause of civilization and the prosperity of the people will in the long run be eminently advanced. But no doubt such a state of things, such a mission as I have described, involves heavy responsibility. In the wide dominions of the Queen the doors of the temple of Janus are never closed, and it is a gigantic task that we have undertaken when we have determined to wield the scepter of empire. Great is the task, great is the responsibility, but great is the honour; and I am convinced that the conscience and the spirit of the country will rise to the height of its obligations, and that we shall have the strength to fulfil the mission which our history and our national character have imposed upon us.

9 Rudyard Kipling

Born in British India in 1865, Rudyard Kipling was educated in England before returning to India in 1882, where his father was a museum director and authority on Indian arts and crafts. Thus Kipling was thoroughly immersed in Indian culture: by 1890 he had published in English about 80 stories and ballads previously unknown outside India. As a result of financial misfortune, from 1892-96 he and his wife, the daughter of an American publisher, lived in Vermont, where he wrote the two Jungle Books. After returning to England, he published "The White Man's Burden" in 1899, an appeal to the United States to assume the task of developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War. As a writer, Kipling perhaps lived too long: by the time of his death in 1936, he had come to be reviled as the poet of British imperialism, though being regarded as a beloved children's book author. Today he might yet gain appreciation as a transmitter of Indian culture to the West.

What is it today's reader finds so repugnant about Kipling's poem? If you were a citizen of a colonized territory, how would you respond to Kipling?

The White Man’s Burden

Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought. 10 Take up the White Man's burden-- No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper-- The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden-- And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard-- The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-- "Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden-- Ye dare not stoop to less-- Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke 1 your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden-- Have done with childish days-- The lightly proferred laurel, 2 The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!

1 Cloak, cover.

2 Since the days of Classical Greece, a laurel wreath has been a symbolic victory prize.

11 Gunga Din Rudyard Kipling

You may talk o’ gin and beer When you’re quartered safe out ’ere, An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it. Now in Injia’s sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen, Of all them blackfaced crew The finest man I knew Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din, He was ‘Din! Din! Din! ‘You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din! ‘Hi! Slippy hitherao ‘Water, get it! Panee lao, ‘You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.’

The uniform ’e wore Was nothin’ much before, An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind, For a piece o’ twisty rag An’ a goatskin water-bag Was all the field-equipment ’e could find. When the sweatin’ troop-train lay In a sidin’ through the day, Where the ’eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl, We shouted ‘Harry By!’ Till our throats were bricky-dry, Then we wopped ’im ’cause ’e couldn’t serve us all. It was ‘Din! Din! Din! ‘You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been? ‘You put some juldee in it ‘Or I’ll marrow you this minute ‘If you don’t fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!’

’E would dot an’ carry one Till the longest day was done; An’ ’e didn’t seem to know the use o’ fear. If we charged or broke or cut, You could bet your bloomin’ nut, ’E’d be waitin’ fifty paces right flank rear. With ’is mussick on ’is back, ’E would skip with our attack, 12 An’ watch us till the bugles made 'Retire,’ An’ for all ’is dirty ’ide ’E was white, clear white, inside When ’e went to tend the wounded under fire! It was ‘Din! Din! Din!’ With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green. When the cartridges ran out, You could hear the front-ranks shout, ‘Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!’

I shan’t forgit the night When I dropped be’ind the fight With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been. I was chokin’ mad with thirst, An’ the man that spied me first Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din. ’E lifted up my ’ead, An’ he plugged me where I bled, An’ ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water green. It was crawlin’ and it stunk, But of all the drinks I’ve drunk, I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. It was 'Din! Din! Din! ‘’Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ’is spleen; ‘’E's chawin’ up the ground, ‘An’ ’e’s kickin’ all around: ‘For Gawd’s sake git the water, Gunga Din!’

’E carried me away To where a dooli lay, An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean. ’E put me safe inside, An’ just before ’e died, 'I ’ope you liked your drink,’ sez Gunga Din. So I’ll meet ’im later on At the place where ’e is gone— Where it’s always double drill and no canteen. ’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals Givin’ drink to poor damned souls, An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! Yes, Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

13 The Mark of the Beast Rudyard Kipling

Your Gods and my Gods-do you or I know which are the stronger? Native Proverb. EAST of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and modified supervision in the case of Englishmen. This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in India: it may be stretched to explain my story. My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows as much of natives of India as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case. Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now; he died, in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described. When Fleete came to India he owned a little money and some land in the Himalayas, near a place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been left him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy, genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course, limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language. He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station, and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year's Eve there was a big dinner at the club, and the night was excusably wet. When men foregather from the uttermost ends of the Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The Frontier had sent down a contingent o' Catch-'em-Alive-O's who had not seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles to dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee bullet where their drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried to play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one of them carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen planters had come in from the south and were talking 'horse' to the Biggest Liar in Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once. Everybody was there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during the past year. It was a very wet night, and I remember that we sang 'Auld Lang Syne' with our feet in the Polo Championship Cup, and our heads among the stars, and swore that we were all dear friends. Then some of us went away and annexed Burma, and some tried to open up the Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies in that cruel scrub outside Suakim, and some found stars and medals, and some were married, which was bad, and some did

14 other things which were worse, and the others of us stayed in our chains and strove to make money on insufficient experiences. Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky, took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past two, winding up with old brandy. Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three in the morning, into fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his horse for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse broke away and went to his stables; so Strickland and I formed a Guard of Dishonour to take Fleete home. Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a little temple of Hanuman, the Monkey-god, who is a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods have good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people--the great gray apes of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend. There was a light in the temple, and as we passed, we could hear voices of men chanting hymns. In a native temple, the priests rise at all hours of the night to do honour to their god. Before we could stop him, Fleete dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the forehead of the red stone image of Hanuman. Strickland tried to drag him out, but he sat down and said solemnly: 'Shee that? 'Mark of the B-beasht! I made it. Ishn't it fine?' In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, and Strickland, who knew what came of polluting gods, said that things might occur. He, by virtue of his official position, long residence in the country, and weakness for going among the natives, was known to the priests and he felt unhappy. Fleete sat on the ground and refused to move. He said that 'good old Hanuman' made a very soft pillow. Then, without any warning, a Silver Man came out of a recess behind the image of the god. He was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold, and his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what the Bible calls 'a leper as white as snow.' Also he had no face, because he was a leper of some years' standing and his disease was heavy upon him. We two stooped to haul Fleete up, and the temple was filling and filling with folk who seemed to spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran in under our arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter, caught Fleete round the body and dropped his head on Fleete's breast before we could wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat mewing while the crowd blocked all the doors. The priests were very angry until the Silver Man touched Fleete. That nuzzling seemed to sober them.

15 At the end of a few minutes' silence one of the priests came to Strickland and said, in perfect English, 'Take your friend away. He has done with Hanuman, but Hanurnan has not done with him/ The crowd gave room and we carried Fleete into the road. Strickland was very angry. He said that we might all three have been knifed, and that Fleete should thank his stars that he had escaped without injury. Fleete thanked no one. He said that he wanted to go to bed. He was gorgeously drunk. We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, until Fleete was taken with violent shivering fits and sweating. He said that the smells of the bazaar were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughter-houses were permitted so near English residences. 'Can't you smell the blood?' said Fleete. We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland invited me to have another whisky and soda. While we were drinking he talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted that it baffled him completely. Strickland hates being mystified by natives, because his business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. He has not yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have made some small progress. 'They should have mauled us,' he said, 'instead of mewing at us. I wonder what they meant. I don't like it one little bit.' I said that the Managing Committee of the temple would in all probability bring a criminal action against us for insulting their religion. There was a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly met Fleete's offence. Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they would do this. Before I left I looked into Fleete's room, and saw him lying on his right side, scratching his left breast. Then. I went to bed cold, depressed, and unhappy, at seven o'clock in the morning. At one o'clock I rode over to Strickland's house to inquire after Fleete's head. I imagined that it would be a sore one. Fleete was breakfasting and seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was abusing the cook for not supplying him with an underdone chop. A man who can eat raw meat after a wet night is a curiosity. I told Fleete this and he laughed. 'You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts,' he said. 'I've been bitten to pieces, but only in one place.' 'Let's have a look at the bite,' said Strickland. 'It may have gone down since this morning.' While the chops were being cooked, Fleete opened his shirt and showed us, just over his left breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black rosettes-the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle-on a leopard's hide. Strickland looked and said, 'It was only pink this morning. It's grown black now.' Fleete ran to a glass.

16 'By Jove!' he said,' this is nasty. What is it?' We could not answer. Here the chops came in, all red and juicy, and Fleete bolted three in a most offensive manner. He ate on his right grinders only, and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped the meat. When he had finished, it struck him that he had been behaving strangely, for he said apologetically, 'I don't think I ever felt so hungry in my life. I've bolted like an ostrich.' After breakfast Strickland said to me, 'Don't go. Stay here, and stay for the night.' Seeing that my house was not three miles from Strickland's, this request was absurd. But Strickland insisted, and was going to say something when Fleete interrupted by declaring in a shamefaced way that he felt hungry again. Strickland sent a man to my house to fetch over my bedding and a horse, and we three went down to Strickland's stables to pass the hours until it was time to go out for a ride. The man who has a weakness for horses never wearies of inspecting them; and when two men are killing time in this way they gather knowledge and lies the one from the other. There were five horses in the stables, and I shall never forget the scene as we tried to look them over. They seemed to have gone mad. They reared and screamed and nearly tore up their pickets; they sweated and shivered and lathered and were distraught with fear. Strickland's horses used to know him as well as his dogs; which made the matter more curious. We left the stable for fear of the brutes throwing themselves in their panic. Then Strickland turned back and called me. The horses were still frightened, but they let us 'gentle' and make much of them, and put their heads in our bosoms. 'They aren't afraid of US,' said Strickland. 'D'you know, I'd give three months' pay if OUTRAGE here could talk.' But Outrage was dumb, and could only cuddle up to his master and blow out his nostrils, as is the custom of horses when they wish to explain things but can't. Fleete came up when we were in the stalls, and as soon as the horses saw him, their fright broke out afresh. It was all that we could do to escape from the place unkicked. Strickland said, 'They don't seem to love you, Fleete.' 'Nonsense,' said Fleete;'my mare will follow me like a dog.' He went to her; she was in a loose- box; but as he slipped the bars she plunged, knocked him down, and broke away into the garden. I laughed, but Strickland was not amused. He took his moustache in both fists and pulled at it till it nearly came out. Fleete, instead of going off to chase his property, yawned, saying that he felt sleepy. He went to the house to lie down, which was a foolish way of spending New Year's Day. Strickland sat with me in the stables and asked if I had noticed anything peculiar in Fleete's manner. I said that he ate his food like a beast; but that this might have been the result of living

17 alone in the hills out of the reach of society as refined and elevating as ours for instance. Strickland was not amused. I do not think that he listened to me, for his next sentence referred to the mark on Fleete's breast, and I said that it might have been caused by blister-flies, or that it was possibly a birth-mark newly born and now visible for the first time. We both agreed that it was unpleasant to look at, and Strickland found occasion to say that I was a fool. 'I can't tell you what I think now,' said he, 'because you would call me a madman; but you must stay with me for the next few days, if you can. I want you to watch Fleete, but don't tell me what you think till I have made up my mind.' 'But I am dining out to-night,' I said. 'So am I,' said Strickland, 'and so is Fleete. At least if he doesn't change his mind.' We walked about the garden smoking, but saying nothing--because we were friends, and talking spoils good tobacco--till our pipes were out. Then we went to wake up Fleete. He was wide awake and fidgeting about his room. 'I say, I want some more chops,' he said. 'Can I get them?' We laughed and said, 'Go and change. The ponies will be round in a minute.' 'All right,' said Fleete. I'll go when I get the chops--underdone ones, mind.' He seemed to be quite in earnest. It was four o'clock, and we had had breakfast at one; still, for a long time, he demanded those underdone chops. Then he changed into riding clothes and went out into the verandah. His pony--the mare had not been caught--would not let him come near. All three horses were unmanageable---mad with fear---and finally Fleete said that he would stay at home and get something to eat. Strickland and I rode out wondering. As we passed the temple of Hanuman, the Silver Man came out and mewed at us. 'He is not one of the regular priests of the temple,' said Strickland. 'I think I should peculiarly like to lay my hands on him.' There was no spring in our gallop on the racecourse that evening. The horses were stale, and moved as though they had been ridden out. 'The fright after breakfast has been too much for them,' said Strickland. That was the only remark he made through the remainder of the ride. Once or twice I think he swore to himself; but that did not count. We came back in the dark at seven o'clock, and saw that there were no lights in the bungalow. 'Careless ruffians my servants are!' said Strickland. My horse reared at something on the carriage drive, and Fleete stood up under its nose. 'What are you doing, grovelling about the garden?' said Strickland.

18 But both horses bolted and nearly threw us. We dismounted by the stables and returned to Fleete, who was on his hands and knees under the orange- bushes. 'What the devil's wrong with you?' said Strickland. 'Nothing, nothing in the world,' said Fleete, speaking very quickly and thickly. 'I've been gardening-botanising you know. The smell of the earth is delightful. I think I'm going for a walk- a long walk-all night.' Then I saw that there was something excessively out of order somewhere, and I said to Strickland, 'I am not dining out.' 'Bless you!' said Strickland. 'Here, Fleete, get up. You'll catch fever there. Come in to dinner and let's have the lamps lit. We 'll all dine at home.' Fleete stood up unwillingly, and said, 'No lamps-no lamps. It's much nicer here. Let's dine outside and have some more chops-lots of 'em and underdone--bloody ones with gristle.' Now a December evening in Northern India is bitterly cold, and Fleete's suggestion was that of a maniac. 'Come in,' said Strickland sternly. 'Come in at once.' Fleete came, and when the lamps were brought, we saw that he was literally plastered with dirt from head to foot. He must have been rolling in the garden. He shrank from the light and went to his room. His eyes were horrible to look at. There was a green light behind them, not in them, if you understand, and the man's lower lip hung down. Strickland said, 'There is going to be trouble-big trouble-to-night. Don't you change your riding- things.' We waited and waited for Fleete's reappearance, and ordered dinner in the meantime. We could hear him moving about his own room, but there was no light there. Presently from the room came the long-drawn howl of a wolf. People write and talk lightly of blood running cold and hair standing up and things of that kind. Both sensations are too horrible to be trifled with. My heart stopped as though a knife had been driven through it, and Strickland turned as white as the tablecloth. The howl was repeated, and was answered by another howl far across the fields. That set the gilded roof on the horror. Strickland dashed into Fleete's room. I followed, and we saw Fleete getting out of the window. He made beast-noises in the back of his throat. He could not answer us when we shouted at him. He spat. I don't quite remember what followed, but I think that Strickland must have stunned him with the long boot-jack or else I should never have been able to sit on his chest. Fleete could not speak, he

19 could only snarl, and his snarls were those of a wolf, not of a man. The human spirit must have been giving way all day and have died out with the twilight. We were dealing with a beast that had once been Fleete. The affair was beyond any human and rational experience. I tried to say 'Hydrophobia,' but the word wouldn't come, because I knew that I was lying. We bound this beast with leather thongs of the punkah-rope, and tied its thumbs and big toes together, and gagged it with a shoe-horn, which makes a very efficient gag if you know how to arrange it. Then we carried it into the dining-room, and sent a man to Dumoise, the doctor, telling him to come over at once. After we had despatched the messenger and were drawing breath, Strickland said, 'It's no good. This isn't any doctor's work.' I, also, knew that he spoke the truth. The beast's head was free, and it threw it about from side to side. Any one entering the room would have believed that we were curing a wolf's pelt. That was the most loathsome accessory of all. Strickland sat with his chin in the heel of his fist, watching the beast as it wriggled on the ground, but saying nothing. The shirt had been torn open in the scuffle and showed the black rosette mark on the left breast. It stood out like a blister. In the silence of the watching we heard something without mewing like a she-otter. We both rose to our feet, and, I answer for myself, not Strickland, felt sick--actually and physically sick. We told each other, as did the men in Pinafore, that it was the cat. Dumoise arrived, and I never saw a little man so unprofessionally shocked. He said that it was a heart-rending case of hydrophobia, and that nothing could be done. At least any palliative measures would only prolong the agony. The beast was foaming at the mouth. Fleete, as we told Dumoise, had been bitten by dogs once or twice. Any man who keeps half a dozen terriers must expect a nip now and again. Dumoise could offer no help. He could only certify that Fleete was dying of hydrophobia. The beast was then howling, for it had managed to spit out the shoe-horn. Dumoise said that he would be ready to certify to the cause of death, and that the end was certain. He was a good little man, and he offered to remain with us; but Strickland refused the kindness. He did not wish to poison Dumoise's New Year. He would only ask him not to give the real cause of Fleete's death to the public. So Dumoise left, deeply agitated; and as soon as the noise of the cart- wheels had died away, Strickland told me, in a whisper, his suspicions. They were so wildly improbable that he dared not say them out aloud; and I, who entertained all Strickland's beliefs, was so ashamed of owning to them that I pretended to disbelieve.

20 'Even if the Silver Man had'bewtiched Fleete for polluting the image of Hanuman, the punishment could not have fallen so quickly.' As I was whispering this the cry outside the house rose again, and the beast fell into a fresh paroxysm of struggling till we were afraid that the thongs that held it would give way. 'Watch!' said Strickland. 'If this happens six times I shall take the law into my own hands. I order you to help me.' He went into his room and came out in a few minutes with the barrels of an old shot-gun, a piece of fishing-line, some thick cord, and his heavy wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions had followed the cry by two seconds in each case, and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker. Strickland muttered, 'But he can't take away the life! He can't take away the life!' I said, though I knew that I was arguing against myself, 'It may be a cat. It must be a cat. If the Silver Man is responsible, why does he dare to come here?' Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put the gun-barrels into the glow of the fire, spread the twine on the table and broke a walking stick in two. There was one yard of fishing line, gut, lapped with wire, such as is used for mahseer-fishing, and he tied the two ends together in a loop. Then he said, 'How can we catch him? He must be taken alive and unhurt.' I said that we must trust in Providence, and go out softly with polo- sticks into the shrubbery at the front of the house. The man or animal that made the cry was evidently moving round the house as regularly as a night-watchman. We could wait in the bushes till he came by and knock him over. Strickland accepted this suggestion, and we slipped out from a bath-room window into the front verandah and then across the carriage drive into the bushes. In the moonlight we could see the leper coming round the corner of the house. He was perfectly naked, and from time to time he mewed and stopped to dance with his shadow. It was an unattractive sight, and thinking of poor Fleete, brought to such degradation by so foul a creature, I put away all my doubts and resolved to help Strickland from the heated gun-barrels to the loop of twine-from the loins to the head and back again---with all tortures that might be needful. The leper halted in the front porch for a moment and we jumped out on him with the sticks. He was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that he might escape or be fatally injured before we caught him. We had an idea that lepers were frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect. Strickland knocked his legs from under him and I put my foot on his neck. He mewed hideously, and even through my riding-boots I could feel that his flesh was not the flesh of a clean man.

21 He struck at us with his hand and feet-stumps. We looped the lash of a dog-whip round him, under the armpits, and dragged him backwards into the hall and so into the dining-room where the beast lay. There we tied him with trunk-straps. He made no attempt to escape, but mewed. When we confronted him with the beast the scene was beyond description. The beast doubled backwards into a bow as though he had been poisoned with strychnine, and moaned in the most pitiable fashion. Several other things happened also, but they cannot be put down here. 'I think I was right,' said Strickland. 'Now we will ask him to cure this case.' But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped a towel round his hand and took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably to Strickland's bedstead. I understood then how men and women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the beast was moaning on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face, you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as waves of heat play across red-hot iron--gun-barrels for instance. Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for a moment and we got to work. This part is not to be printed. The dawn was beginning to break when the leper spoke. His mewings had not been satisfactory up to that point. The beast had fainted from exhaustion and the house was very still. We unstrapped the leper and told him to take away the evil spirit. He crawled to the beast and laid his hand upon the left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down and whined, drawing in his breath as he did so. We watched the face of the beast, and saw the soul of Fleete coming back into the eyes. Then a sweat broke out on the forehead and the eyes-they were human eyes---closed. We waited for an hour but Fleete still slept. We carried him to his room and bade the leper go, giving him the bedstead, and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his nakedness, the gloves and the towels with which we had touched him, and the whip that had been hooked round his body. He put the sheet about him and went out into the early morning without speaking or mewing. Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A night-gong, far away in the city, made seven o'clock. 'Exactly four-and-twenty hours!' said Strickland. 'And I've done enough to ensure my dismissal from the service, besides permanent quarters in a lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are awake?' The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the carpet. The smell was entirely real. That morning at eleven we two together went to wake up Fleete. We looked and saw that the black leopard-rosette on his chest had disappeared. He was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as

22 he saw us, he said, 'Oh! Confound you fellows. Happy New Year to you. Never mix your liquors. I'm nearly dead.' 'Thanks for your kindness, but you're over time,' said Strickland. 'To- day is the morning of the second. You've slept the clock round with a vengeance.' The door opened, and little Dumoise put his head in. He had come on foot, and fancied that we were laving out Fleete. 'I've brought a nurse,' said Dumoise. 'I suppose that she can come in for... what is necessary.' 'By all means,' said Fleete cheerily, sitting up in bed. 'Bring on your nurses.' Dumoise was dumb. Strickland led him out and explained that there must have been a mistake in the diagnosis. Dumoise remained dumb and left the house hastily. He considered that his professional reputation had been injured, and was inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery. Strickland went out too. When he came back, he said that he had been to call on the Temple of Hanuman to offer redress for the pollution of the god, and had been solemnly assured that no white man had ever touched the idol and that he was an incarnation of all the virtues labouring under a delusion. 'What do you think?' said Strickland. I said, '"There are more things . . ."' But Strickland hates that quotation. He says that I have worn it threadbare. One other curious thing happened which frightened me as much as anything in all the night's work. When Fleete was dressed he came into the dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick of moving his nose when he sniffed. 'Horrid doggy smell, here,' said he. 'You should really keep those terriers of yours in better order. Try sulphur, Strick.' But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold of the back of a chair, and, without warning, went into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is terrible to see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then it struck me that we had fought for Fleete's soul with the Silver Man in that room, and had disgraced ourselves as Englishmen for ever, and I laughed and gasped and gurgled just as shamefully as Strickland, while Fleete thought that we had both gone mad. We never told him what we had done. Some years later, when Strickland had married and was a church-going member of society for his wife's sake, we reviewed the incident dispassionately, and Strickland suggested that I should put it before the public. I cannot myself see that this step is likely to clear up the mystery; because, in the first place, no one will believe a rather unpleasant story, and, in the second, it is well known to every right-

23 minded man that the gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to deal with them otherwise is justly condemned.

24 Shooting an Elephant George Orwell

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

All this was perplexing and upsetting. 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. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone "must." It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of "must" is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had 25 already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.

The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of "Go away, child! Go away this instant!" and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast's foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend's house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.

The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever- growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd's approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.

I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can 26 possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of "must" was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. 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. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me 27 pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.

Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. 28 Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

29 The Hollow Men By: T.S. Eliot

“Mistah Kurtz-he dead” A penny for the Old Guy

I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when 5 We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass 10 In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost 15 Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.

II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom 20 These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are 25 In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn 30 Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom 30 Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves 35 No nearer –

Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom

III This is the dead land This is cactus land 40 Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this 45 In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss 50 Form prayers to broken stone.

IV The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley 55 This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river 60 Sightless, unless The eyes reappear

31 As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom 65 The hope only Of empty men.

V Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear 70 At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act 75 Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion 80 And the response Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire And the spasm 85 Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow 90 For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is Life is For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends 95 This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends

32 Not with a bang but a whimper.

33 Notes on “The Hollow Men”

Title: Eliot claimed to have made up the title, "The Hollow Men" from combining "The Hollow Land", the title of a romance by William Morris with Kipling's title, "The Broken Men". Many scholars believe this to be one of Ol' Possum's many false trails, instead believing it comes from a mention of 'hollow men' in Julius Caesar or any of several references to Joseph Conrad's Kurtz as hollow in some way (a 'hollow sham', 'hollow at the core'). The title immediately presents us with the first of many allusions, directly referencing two of the four main sources for this poem, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness (which I will often abbreviate HoD). The other sources are the Gunpowder Plot and The Divine Comedy, both of which also deal with men or shadows of men who may be described as hollow at the core. The Gunpowder Plot: This conspiracy arose from the English Catholics' resentment of King James I and his reign's treatment of their religion. A group of extremists led by Rober Catesby planed to seize power by killing King James I and his ministers at the State Opening of Parliament (November 5, 1605), leaving England without a government. Francis Tresham, one of the conspirators, gave the plan away when he wrote to his brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, telling him to stay away from the Houses of Parliament during the Opening. Monteagle informed the Lord Chancellor of the warning, who in turn told the king. On November 4, 1605, Guy Fawkes was arrested in the cellars of the House of Lords, standing guard over two tons of gunpowder. He was tortured until he revealed the names of his co-conspirators, who, if they hadn't yet fled the country, were soon executed. Now the British celebrate November 5 with bonfires, fireworks, and by burning effigies of Guy. Theoretically, they are celebrating the execution of a traitor, though some have been been known to see it as a celebration of the near death of the monarchy. Julius Caesar: Shakespeare's version of the story of Julius Caesar also centers around a violent conspiracy of men who are blinded by their cause. In it, Brutus, a leading Roman citizen, is approached by Cassius, who is recruiting people to conspire to assassinate Caesar. Cassius is motivated by ambition, envy, and malice, and he persuades Brutus that Caesar is a tyrant who will destroy the Roman Republic. Cassius plays on Brutus's vanity of his fame as champion for the public good, blinding Brutus to the evil nature of the conspiracy. The Divine Comedy: Dante Alighieri's classic allegorical story in which, Dante himself becomes a pilgrim traveling through the three kingdoms of the afterlife: hell (The Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio), and heaven (Paradiso). He is lead through the first two by the poet Virgil in a pilgrimage orchestrated by his late love Beatrice in an attempt to redeem his soul and convince him to change his life so that after seeing Beatrice in heaven he will desire to join her there again after his own death. Heart of Darkness: Next to Dante's writing, this story by Joseph Conrad is commonly held to be most important and influential literary experience in Eliot's poetry. It is a story full of hollow men- men empty of faith, personality, moral strength, and even humanity. In it the character Marlow tells of his own journey into the heart of Africa, a dark world populated by morally empty men living only for ivory and the money and power that it brings. Deep in the interior, he meets Kurtz, the most depraved man of them all, yet one who, on his deathbed, seems to realize the true horror of what he and humanity as he knows it is and does. 1925: Eliot wrote this poem during a period of absence from the bank, having just suffered a nervous breakdown. The theme of 'hollowness' presented in the poem directly relates to his own psychological condition at the time, a condition known at the time as 'aboulie'.1

34 epigraph to section: The words spoken by a servant to announce Kurtz's death. They signal the end of an evil presence, but also the end of one who was formerly a great man. With his death the values he held during life also die, leaving the survivors without anything to guide them. epigraph to poem: A version of 'A penny for the Guy?', the cry children take up when begging money to buy fireworks with on Guy Fawkes Day.

1-4: The 'hollow men' and 'stuffed men', 'filled with straw' are a combination of the effigies burned on Guy Fawkes Day, the conspirators in Julius Caesar, and Kurtz. More profoundly, they are Eliot's modern man, an empty, corrupt breed. 2: According to Valerie Eliot, the marionette in Stravinsky's Petrouchka .2 4: Straw is the usual filling for the effigies burned on Guy Fawkes Day. It is also a common building material for effigies used in harvest or fertility rituals celebrating the symbolic death of a vegetation god as necessary for the rebirth and growth of the land. One of these, observed by both Sir James Frazer and W. Warde Fowler is the Roman ritual of the Argei. This imagery suggests that a sacrifice of the 'hollow men' can redeem mankind and that after their destruction we can again flourish. 6: Whispers act as an instrument of fate throughout HoD. Marlow recounts how the wilderness "had whispered to [Kurtz] things about himself which he did not know ... and the whisper proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core".4 And while Marlow attempts and fails to summon up the courage to tell Kurtz's Intended the truth about Kurtz's last words, those words are whispered in his mind, signifying his own hollowness and cowardice. Besides symbolizing fate, whispers can also signify conspiracy, a theme present throughout this poem and seemingly inherent in the hollow men. 11-12: This refers to a condition of unfulfillment as seen in the spiritual state of the shades in Inferno iii. These shades never made a choice regarding their spiritual state during life (neither following nor rebelling against God) instead living solely for themselves. Neither heaven nor hell will let them past its gates. A similar condition exists, in HoD, among the men of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition: they lacked the moral strength and courage to back up their greed. A third explanation of the lines is Marlow's own experience with and resistance of death. Here we see that the same description that applies to the hollow men can also be applied to what is experienced by those who attempt to struggle against that empty way of life and death. 13-15: Those who have crossed to death's other kingdom are those who have left behind a state of spiritual nothingness (or, alternatively, hell or purgatory) and entered into knowledge and recognition of that state ( or heaven). They are the ones who are capable of looking directly at life and the universe and seeing the inner truth. Kurtz, though probably not heaven bound, had the same moment of realization just before his death, as seen in his stare and his final utterance, "The horror! The horror!" The idea of crossing refers to a transition from one state to the other, such as when Dante the Pilgrim had to cross to rivers to be freed from sin and shame before his eyes could stand to look upon his beloved Beatrice in heaven. This is a plea from the hollow men to those who have escaped their fate. Like the numerous souls who beg Dante to keep their memory alive, they are asking for those lucky souls to remember the fate of those less fortunate, and to also remember that they were not seeking to do wrong, but simply lacked what the lucky ones have, morals and values. 15: The song sung by children begging for pennies on Guy Fawkes Day begins "Please to remember / The fifth of November / Gunpowder, treason, and plot."

35 19: Beatrice tells Dante how she came to him first in dreams to lead him back to the part of virtue. Just as Beatrice give Dante a chance for redemption by orchestrating his journey, all men also have the chance for redemption. 19-22: Dante cannot meet Beatrice's eyes when he first sees her because he still feels shame and suffers their reprove. He acts like a disobedient child unable to meet a stern parent's gaze until he is purified by the waters of the River Lethe. Marlow encounters the force of eyes and glances throughout his adventures, ranging from the invisible eyes of the forest, to Kurtz's dying gaze, to the "guileless, profound, confident, and trustful" gaze of Kurtz's intended.5 The hollow men should be shamed by the eyes of the virtuous, but at the same time those eyes contain within them a chance for redemption. This is an opportunity Dante the pilgrim accepted and Marlow refused. 20-22: In heaven, Dante no longer feels shamed by Beatrice's gaze, but instead, marvels in her beauty, which continues to grow as they advance to the uppermost strata of heaven. Once the invitation for redemption is accepted and virtue is restored, the formerly hollow man has no reason to feel shame when looking into the eyes of the virtuous. "Death's dream kingdom" is heaven; in order to have reached that paradise, even if by means of a guide, the soul must already have been purified. He does not see the same shame causing eyes he saw originally, instead he sees a gaze that he can meet. 23-28: These lines resemble the Dante's description of the Earthly Paradise, when still seen from afar in Cantos xxvii-xxix. Dante used the star as a symbol representing God or Mary. 23: A broken column is a traditional graveyard memorial for a premature death. 24: A book Eliot reviewed in 1923, The Sacred Dance by W.O.E. Oesterley contains the image of a 'savage' who is awestruck by 'a tree, swayed by wind, moved'.6 32: In the section "The Propitiation of Vermin by Farmers" in The Golden Bough Frazer discusses both the dressing in animal skins for ritualistic purposes, as well as the custom of hanging up the corpse of a member of a crop damaging species as a possible origin of the scarecrow. Weston looks at the staves of Morris Dancers, clowns in a costume of animal skins or a cap of skin. She sees them as a surviving remnant of earlier vegetation ceremonies. Where the previous stanza showed the beauty present in paradise and the hope a tormented soul has of reaching that place, this one and the next show that souls fear in the obstacles that will have to overcome before that can happen. 33: In The Waste Land Eliot associates the "man with three staves" a card in the Tarot with the Fisher King 35: In the Inferno spirits are blown about by the wind and in HoD the native dies just because he left the shutter open, "He had no restraint- just like Kurtz- a tree swayed in the wind." 37-38: Both Dante the Pilgrim and Marlow must face a meeting they greatly fear. Dante must meet Beatrice and face her divine beauty. In doing so he can't help but be reminded of all of his own sins and failings, but by crossing the River Lethe, which flows in shadow, he can be purified and look upon her. At this point, he has completed the unpleasant stages of his journey, which is really an attempt to save his own soul, so that after his own death he will be able to join her in heaven. Marlow also faces the crux of his journey when he faces Kurtz's fiancé, but he chooses a darker path. He follows through on his word to Kurtz by giving her his letters, but he can not bring himself to tell the truth about his last words. In his submission to the heart of darkness he faces a moral twilight in which he chooses the shadow, literally, as the sun sets. The twilight that sets in is the choice the soul must face between light and darkness.

36 39-44: These lines are thought to be material originally discarded from The Waste Land as they closely resemble lines from sections I and V both in language and imagery. The stone images (and 'broken stone' in l. 51) suggests idolatrous worship. "The worship of stones is a degradation of a higher form of worship," F.B. Jevens's An Introduction to the History of Religions, a 1896 text Eliot is known to have studied at Harvard. The desert imagery suggests sterility, probably the sterility of the modern world. 47: HoD: "We live, as we dream - alone." 49-51: To the end, Kurtz's Intended is confident in his faithfulness, goodness, and unending love for her, while in reality he has turned to the worship of pagan forces (stone is symbolic of idolatrous and thus, non-Christian worship). 50-51: A perversion of Juliet's line about "lips that they must use in prayer" instead of for kissing. Kurtz's lips are being used in pagan worship instead of to express love for his Intended. Also, from Psalm 57, as used in Purgatorio xxii, xxxiii, "Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise!" 52-56: The valley Marlow walks through upon his arrival to the Congo, half excavated, littered with abandoned objects, and hopeless native laborers, "it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno ... Black shapes crouched, lay sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced with in the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair." Like ll. 39-44, a representation of the sterile, modern world, a place where the eyes that offer hope and shame don't exist. 56: Possibly the "new jaw bone of an ass" (Judges xv, 15-19) with which Samson slew a thousand Philistines. This would seem to signify that the civilizing factor has broken, contributing to, or allowing, modern man's decline. The Golden Bough offers an anthropological explanation; the Baganda (and African tribe) believe that the spirit of the dead clings to the jawbone. The jaw bone of their deceased king is made into an effigy and put in a temple. Again, since the bone is broken, any leadership that could have taken from the talisman is no longer available. 57-60: These lines allude to all four major sources: the last meeting places and tumid rivers encountered by the Pilgrim on his journey, the element of conspiracy (last meetings before the treasonous act) in Julius Caesar and of the Gunpowder Plot, and Marlow's experiences with the secretive trading company, "It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy." At the trading station he finds that most of the white employees occupy themselves "by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about the station, but nothing came of it, of course it was as unreal as everything else." This is the final meeting of a doomed conspiracy, the meeting of the lost, hollow souls before they sentenced to the inferno. 60: Dante's River Acheron flowing around hell or the river Marlow follows into the African 'heart of darkness'. 61-62: If the eyes reappear, so does hope and the possibility for salvation. At Dante the Pilgrim's first meeting with Beatrice, her eyes were shameful for him to look upon, yet they also signaled the possibility of his redemption. When he is able to look upon her again it signifies a change in the state of his soul, it has been purified. When Marlow meets Kurtz's Intended, he is looked upon by the eyes of a pure spirit, "The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless, profound, and trustful." That moment Marlow's chance to resist the darkness which has penetrated modern life.

37 63-64: In Paradiso xxx the Pilgrim's vision of the highest level of heaven is of a rose whose petals are formed by Mary and the saints. In Paradiso xxxi he refers to God as the 'single star', and in Paradiso xxxii and elsewhere he refers to Mary as a rose. 65: The twilight refers to Marlow's meeting with Kurtz's Intended, to the twilight that is physically gathering, and to the hopelessness in Marlow's own soul. Twilight represents a choice, but it can also be the mere memory of that choice. 68-71: These lines parody a children's song that is derived from a fertility dance done around a mulberry bush 'on a cold and frosty morning'. A prickly pear is a desert cactus, continuing the desert imagery that is particularly prevalent at the beginning of the third section of the poem. 5:00am is the traditional time of Christ's resurrection. In a 1923 review Eliot quoted Frazer on "how often with the decay of old faiths the serious rites and pageants .. [primitive, religious dances] have degenerated into the sports of children." Here he has further perverted the children's song by turning it into a modern infertility dance. By performing an infertility dance at the moment of resurrection, we are in effect blocking and rejecting the salvation it can bring. 72-90: Taken almost directly from Julius Caesar II.i: BRUTUS Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interm is Like a phantasma, or hideous dream: The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of men, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection. Another possible source is the line "Between the void and its pure issue" from Valéry's The Cemetery by the Sea. In 1924, Eliot wrote an introduction to Valéry's Le Serpent in which he compared that line to Brutus's lines. He viewed The Cemetery by the Sea as an expression of Valery's melancholy skepticism attributed to "the agony of creation ... the mind constantly mocks and dissuades, and urges the creative activity in vain." The three central stanzas of this section closely resemble Valery's in their phrasal structure and emphatic rhythm and also in their thematic contrast between 'idea' and 'reality'. This section of the poem deals with the true cause of hollowness- failing to make that choice that was once offered, failing to take action, giving in and living only as a shadow. The shadow has had a chance to recognize the difference between salvation and damnation and has either rejected that chance or failed to choose between the two. 76: In 1935 Eliot accepted a suggestion that he had taken the 'Shadow' from "Non sum qualis eram" (I am not now as once I was) Ernest Dowson's most famous poem. It contains the phrases "Then fell thy shadow" and "Then falls the shadow." He is quoted as responding, "This derivation had not occurred in my mind, but I believe it to be correct, because the lines... have always run in my head." HoD also features shadows throughout: the boat moves in shadow, men die with shadows across their faces, pain is experienced in shadow, Kurtz's secrets are metaphorical shadows, Kurtz himself is a "Shadow - that wandering and tormented thing," and at the end of the story a shadow stretches across the sky, a shadow over all of mankind. 77: Part of the Lord's Prayer, as originally mentioned in I Chronicles xxix. 83: Like l. 77 and l. 91, this line is italicized, suggesting a quotation. In this case it is from Conrad's An Outcast of the Islands, in which a broken man is punished by being kept alive rather than by being killed.

38 86-87: From Aristotelian philosophy, "matter only has potency until form gives it existence". 88-89: From Platonic philosophy, "the essence is the inapprehensible ideal, which finds material expression in its descent to the lower, material plane of reality." 95-98: Here, Eliot is again parodying the children's song 'Here we go round the mulberry bush,' specifically the line "this is the way we clap our hands". He's also referring to the biblical idea of a world without end from, "Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen" 98: George Santayana lectured at Harvard while Eliot was a student there. His account of the Divine Comedy included: "it all ends, not with a bang, not with some casual incident, but in sustained reflection."18 The whimper could be in reference to two things: the Kipling poem, "Danny Deever", with which Eliot is known to have been familier and Dante's description of a newborn baby's cry upon leaving one world to enter another. That in turns suggests the image of a repentant Dante standing before Beatrice as a child before as stern parent. The whimper is that Guy Fawkes exhaled when he gave up his co-conspirators, it is what Brutus and Cassius spoke when their plans to rule crumbled, it is Kurtz's last utterance when he finally realizes the truth of the world he lives in, and it is the end for all hollow men.

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