Orwell's narrator stereotypes the Burmese. He calls them "evil spirited little beasts," equating them with animals. He labels them twice as "yellow faces." He also groups them together as a mass that is "all happy and excited over this bit of fun." At the end of the essay, he even says he is glad the elephant killed the "coolie," as it put him, the narrator, in the right and gave him an unassailable legal pretext for his act. He shows no sorrow or remorse that a human being was killed, suggesting that the native was less than a person to him.
The narrator himself consciously adopts the stereotype of the British colonial figure, cool and in command, doing what is expected in his own role: "A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things." He calls himself a "puppet" and a "dummy" and says his face has grown to fit the mask he wears. He is not a person, but a type, both in his own eyes and the eyes of the Burmese. He is enacting, not challenging, their stereotypes of the British ruling class.
Interestingly, however, the narrator does not pull out any of the "white man's burden" stereotypes we might associate with Kipling. The narrator never pretends he is doing good for the Burmese, protecting them or sacrificing for their benefit. The essay maintains a consistent tone of disillusion with the British empire and what it does to the people caught up in it, which is to dehumanize everyone in the system by reducing them to types.
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