Wanderlust World Wanderlust World George Orwell (Eric Blair) served as a colonial police officer in British Burma (1922–1927). The experience forged his lifelong anti-imperialism, vividly dissected in Burmese Days (1934), Shooting an Elephant (1936), and A Hanging (1931).
Orwell saw empire not just as exploitation of the colonized, but as a machine that dehumanizes the colonizer. The white man, forced to perform "the white man's burden," becomes a hollow actor, trapped by the expectation of infallibility.
Orwell, a sub-divisional police officer in Moulmein, is called to handle a rampaging work elephant. The animal has killed a coolie but is now calm. Orwell has no desire to shoot it. Yet a crowd of 2,000+ Burmese gathers. He realizes:
"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... He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it."
He shoots the elephant—slowly, agonizingly—solely to avoid looking foolish. The act epitomizes empire: violence performed to maintain the performance of superiority.
Orwell didn't just oppose empire—he exposed its internal logic. His Burmese writings remain essential for understanding how power corrupts both wielder and subject, and why he devoted his life to democratic socialism and truth-telling against totalitarianism in all forms.