Yes, George Orwell's essays are suitable for college students to read and often assigned in college-level courses. Let's take, for example, the essay in question, "Shooting an Elephant." While written, like almost all of Orwell's work, in accessible prose, the essay does not shy away from dealing with complex problems. What Orwell illustrates through the unnecessary suffering and death of the elephant is the barbarous systemic injustice produced by a brutal colonialism. There are no easy...
Yes, George Orwell's essays are suitable for college students to read and often assigned in college-level courses. Let's take, for example, the essay in question, "Shooting an Elephant." While written, like almost all of Orwell's work, in accessible prose, the essay does not shy away from dealing with complex problems. What Orwell illustrates through the unnecessary suffering and death of the elephant is the barbarous systemic injustice produced by a brutal colonialism. There are no easy answers, no black and white scenarios, no heroes or villains in this piece: the narrator might roundly condemn European colonial abuses, but he also loathes the colonized people of Burma for the ways they express their hatred for the British regime. Orwell simultaneously shows that the killing of the elephant was defensible within the corrupt logic of the colonial system and completely indefensible in the context of a humane social order. Grappling with issues such as these that offer no easy answers is one of the missions of college courses in the humanities.
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