‘Shooting an Elephant’ is a collection of Orwell’s essays, each with different topics and tones so I have summarised and reviewed each individually, yet my star rating is overall.

The opening essay ‘Shooting an Elephant’ describes him having to kill a rampaging elephant during his time as a police officer in Burma, a criticism of British Imperialism and how he loathed it despite working for the system of of it and also a look at the racism he faced when working there, despite he and the British being the colonisers. It is an unexpected angle to explore a criticism of colonialism.

‘The Spike’ was a recount of a night in the spike, less interesting to me as I have read ‘Down and out in London and Paris’ and it seemed to just be a passage from that, though I don’t believe it was. Orwell described the wasted time, the wasted food for principe and the grim conditions, and then when his night came to a close, headed to find the next spike and start it all over again. 

Why I Write is an essay on what Orwell sees as the reason for writing. He first explores his early poetry and short stories of childhood, and how Burmese Days was written with desire for an unhappy ending and purple prose. The 4 reasons for writing were then outlined: selfish motives, to perceive the worlds beauty, historical impulse or political motive. Pre-Spanish civil war Orwell noted his writing embodied the first three, but after 1936 all his writings existed to speak against totalitarianism, to expose a lie and that writing would be better what the author was conscious of the political bias and weave the creative with the political, as he noted with Animal Farm. He references that he wants to write another book, and it will be a failure though he will still write it as he has desire and purpose. This future book wasn’t a failure, it was 1984, the greatest piece of literature ever written in my opinion and of what I have read before.

Politics and the English Language was a fascinating essay on the decay of language, how it is watered down with big meaningless words and metaphors and that bad language creates bad thought and creates worse language. It discusses the principles for good and bad writing and crucially how bad writing allows political writing to make lies appear truthful. This idea of the decay and propaganda of language shines through in 1984.

'In Defence of English Cooking' is a short essay claiming that the foreigners who claim English cooking to be the worse cuisine don't experience English cuisine because they eat in the pubs and restaurants, and the true beauty of our food is that cooked in the home, in the lower class households, the deserts and Yorkshire puddings and breads. 

The longest part of the collection is 'Such such were the joys' which recounts Orwell's school days at St Cypriens, the abuse he faced at the hands of his teachers Sambo and Flip for simply being of a lower class because his scholarships meant they were investing into him. Orwell did not idolise those days and critiques the private education system. Thought as a whole, despite its longer length and deeper exploration of the topic I didn't care much for this essay.

The best essay in my opinion was by far the short ‘Some thoughts on the common toad' which describes how the toad is the first sign of spring, that nature is inevitable despite the efforts of the world to destroy it in context of 1940, and the closing line is so beautiful. “The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.” It was so bleak yet hopeful and all symbolised through the toad, such an ugly and unconventional sign of spring, yet even there beauty is found.