What did Orwell think of Animals?

At least once every year I make it a point in my life to go over Such, Such is the Life, a collection of essays by George Orwell. It is a sort of literary pilgrimage, a spiritual destination that I can return to and feel grounded in meaning against the post-modern maelstrom of everyday life.

As a collection, Such Such is the Life is a broad cross-section of Orwell’s working the titled where the author reflects on the hardships of his school with ruddy Dickensian detail. The secret is to read it as fast as possible so that you can catch the trains of thought that run throughout the collection. Each new reading usually gives me a new train. This time I noticed his treatment of animals.

One of Orwell’s famous essays included in Such, Such is the Life, is On Killing an Elephant. It is a story from his time as a policeman in colonial Burma, in which an elephant experiencing an attack of must (whatever that is) rampages through a small village and ends up killing a Burmese coolie. The coolie has been stomped into wet mud and lies twisted, his eyes bulging his mouth contorted with rictus. While the young Orwell is ambivalent about the British Empire feels the white man’s burden and has a responsibility to act. An entire village of gawkers follow Orwell who finds the elephant peacefully chewing tearing up grass, beating the dirt out of it against his legs and shoving it into his mouth.

Orwell feels that the crowd of villagers have come to expect him to kill the elephant and so he must. He states how he feels their collective wills pressing him on. He gets a high caliber rifle and shoots the elephant. This is not as simple as it sounds and the whole process takes about half an hour. In the essay it is described in the most gruesome detail. He shoots the elephant in the head and it falls to its knees then shoots him in the head again and it seems ‘very old’. Only after it falls he tries to shoot it in the heart but it lies there with blood welling up around the wound “like velvet”. He “pours shot after shot” into the cavern of the elephant’s mouth until he is eventually hacked up by the villagers who take the poor animal’s meat.

I was left to wonder what purpose all this detail served. Was it that villages stared on at “a bit of fun” while Orwell’s suffering at having to enact their bloodthirsty mandate? Was it to emphasise how messy the task was to be a policeman in colonial Britain? I think it is to underscore the distance between the Burmese and Orwell, the unbridgeable gap between ruler and ruled. Yet despite the graphic nature of this episode it is interesting to note that little compassion is directed towards the animal itself. Orwell’s regret at shooting it seems to be at his own loss of innocence and the morally flawed British Empire instead of taking away the life of an animal unnecessarily. It is as if he is the victim.

I am always willing to give Orwell the benefit of the doubt and there seems to be a sense of defilement of something eternal and human in that detail - the elephant is “grandmotherly” but he does say that the loss is essentially a loss of an expensive piece of machinery.

Later on in the collection Orwell talks about going to the Jewish ghetto in Marrakesh. Again he goes into great detail this time about how the donkeys are overworked. He praises the donkey for its loyalty and obedience and you can see can see the character of the horse in his novel Animal Farm being extracted from real life (more on that soon). Orwells notes that the grossest injustice is that after twelve years of service the donkey is flung dead into a ditch to be eaten by the village dogs. It’s enough to make his “blood boil”. Here the humans are invisible while the animals have become the victim. Perhaps this represents an evolution in his attitude towards animals?

The most important case of Orwell and animals is of course Animal Farm. This novel is an extended allegory in which the animals are the prolateriat being worked to death by humans for generations. They overthrow their human lords and take they destiny into their own hands. Needless to say this is as complicated and flawed as a real revolution and eventually the animals prey on and exploit each other in the way that humans used to.

Can we conclude anything about Orwell’s attitude towards animals from this or are they simply a literary device to convey how a revolution will inevitably betray itself? The story conveys Orwell’s view of the inherent innocence of animals and he sides with them and their backbreaking exploitation over the human lords. It is only once they exhibit human qualities that corruption begins to seep in. He clearly feels that this is unjust and that animals deserve to be humanely treated.

Animal Farm represents the final point on a line that begins with Orwell considering animals as simply tools of humans and ended with Orwell extended his bottomless humanity to animals as an indentured and exploited class unto themselves. Throughout this process Orwell has decided the gulf between some of mankind and beast is far less than the difference within mankind itself. This humanising of animals or at least nearing people to animals if very British country middle class. His writing sometimes glances the style of Beatrix Potter in that he has clearly observed animals in quiet within their native habitat and concluded that they are interesting characters that are worth defending.