Shooting an Elephant to save face

Getting at the truth, as Orwell put it, is one motivation for writing. This permeates Orwell's writing, his novels, his journalism, and his essays. One essay that most of us remember reading in school is his essay entitled "Shooting an Elephant". It is about the time that Orwell spent in colonial Burma working as a colonial policeman. He points out in this essay the "futility of the white man's dominion in the East." It was a hollow dominion for in order to keep the respect of those over whom Britain held dominion the British had to do what the population expected. In the case of this essay it was that Orwell had to shoot an elephant that he personally did not want to kill. However, as Orwell put it: "He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it." The crowd behind Orwell the policeman expected him to shoot the elephant, but he preferred not to, even though he was legally entitled to shoot it because it had killed a man. The truth that emerges and that Orwell has the courage to share is that he in fact did it because he was a coward; a coward to face the crowd, a coward of being - not hurt by them, but of being laughed at. This is what Orwell writes at the end of the essay:

"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."

Homage to George Orwell

Big Frank with this post begins a series of posts in honor of and in reference to the great twentieth century writer, George Orwell. Most people are at least familiar with his two best known novels, Animal Farm and 1984. He wrote lots else: essays, literary criticism, poetry, and journalism. However, what most impresses Big Frank is the unbelievably clarity of his prose. This man could put sentences together with such finesse that just reading them is a kind of mental therapy. That is exactly what Big Frank is going to do with these next few posts on Orwell; he is going to display the brillance not only of what Orwell said, but the beauty in how he said it.

Let's begin with why it is that Orwell wrote. He put the reasons down in an essay entitle "Why I Write". I gives four main reasons - listed below in an excerpt from the essay: to be noticed, to percieve beauty, to get to the truth of the matter, and to put the world right in some way.

Big Frank's favorite line below is this: "The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class."

An essay could be written on this line alone: what does it really mean to "live their own lives to the end"?

OK - here's Orwell's four great motives for writing:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

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For the complete essay go here.
George Orwell: ‘Why I Write’
First published: Gangrel. — GB, London. — summer 1946.

Father's Day with Gina

Big Frank was treated to a wonderful Father's Day by his beautiful daughter, Gina. What better way to spend the day than shopping and sushi? (Don't ask why there is a football in the sushi bar!) Thanks, Gina!

Look What He Did

He Went and Put His Head In There
Big Frank Dickinson

"Don't put your head in there. It's going to cause trouble." They went on to say that his head was not wanted in there and when it went in there it would only cause him embarrassment because he would have to withdraw it, or if he left it there then everyone would know and would comment along the lines of, "Look at that head; he stuck it in there when everyone told him that he shouldn't." Still he did it. At first it felt good - he was thinking that this is exactly where his head belonged; it seemed to really fit in many ways. The view was excellent, and having always wanted to have his head there he also thought that he certainly was being true to himself by having it there. Then (the inevitable other side) he began to think that while it was wonderful for him to have his head where he had inserted it (and the view was promising) he was hearing things like: "Why did he do that?", and "Hadn't he agreed never to put his head in there." OK, he had said something along those lines, not so much of not putting his head in there, but rather of acknowledging that with his head in there, everything would be much different and many things would be more obvious, but that's not the same as promising never to put his head in there. In other words, while it is true that maybe he had, at times, thought about it - and that was perfectly OK, as long as he didn't talk about it, just as those few people who opposed it, perhaps thought, privately that it really was not appropriate for him to have his head in there, the whole agreement rested on the quiet understanding, without explanation, that his head really was better off, for them anyway, not being there. Then he went and did it. He put it in there, deciding, as much that he wanted it in there, as - Ok, they way don't want it in there, but maybe they really do want it in there, and only say they don't because they can't admit, for reasons that he couldn't understand, that his putting his head in there was exactly what they most wanted. Now with his head in there he didn't hear: "Take that head out of there." No what he heard was: "We are not going to even comment or discuss on the fact that your head is in there. This is not going to be discussed." So he thought: "They didn't say that they didn't like it in there - so mabe they really do, but just can't admit it, for reasons that he didn't know, and maybe they didn't know either." Then he thought - maybe it was such a shock, and his head, being in there, were it to be discussed, it might open up conversations that would prove not so much that it was OK for him to have his head in there, but rather that they all along did want his head in there, but to admit it now would prove embarrassing to them because they had told all their friends that they certainly didn't want his head in there, while secretly thinking that it might be pretty cool if he put his head in there. He kept it in there and they went silent. He kept it in there.

Summertime Summertime

Big Frank officially declares that summer is here. The shots above prove it: all taken at Newman Lake after a super good bike ride around the lake with Laura, riding her super new bike. Summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime . . .

Corner bar + Tom Waits

So Big Frank took the picture (above), and then thought of Tom Waits - hence the song below.