Page 149 - ELA_CA_HighSchool_Sampler_Flipbook

2 All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically—and secretly, of course—I was all for the Burmese
and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lockups, the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of men who had been flogged with bamboos—all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil- spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum1, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-product of imperialism; ask any Anglo- Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.
Chunk 2
3 One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was
a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism—the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the subinspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got onto a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem.2 Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must.”
It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must”3 is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout,4 the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.
4 The Burmese subinspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in
the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth
of squalid huts, thatched with palm leaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember
it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that it had gone in another,
1 saecula saeculorum: forever and ever
2 in terrorem: in case of fright or terror
3 must: a condition of dangerous frenzy
4 mahout: the keeper and driver of an elephant
My Notes
supplant: replace
prostrate: overpowered
Unit 1 • Perception Is Everything 69
ACTIVITY 1.18
continued
constables: police officers who are appointed or elected
ACTIVITY 1.18 continued
7 This text is divided into chunks to support reading and discussion. You may consider modifying the reading mode as your students work through each chunk. For example, you may begin by reading the first chunk aloud before switching to small group or independent reading for the subsequent chunks.
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SCAFFOLDING THE TEXT-DEPENDENT QUESTIONS
3. Key Ideas and Details (RI.11–12.1) In paragraph 3, what does the narrator mean when he uses the word “enlightening”? What does the narrator describe as enlightening? What does he learn or understand more clearly as a result of this enlightening occurrence?
4. Key Ideas and Details (RI.11–12.3) Explain the sequence of events that leads to the narrator being called to “do something about”
a rampaging elephant. Reread paragraph 3. Number each event that the narrator describes. What comments in the paragraph reveal different perspectives on those events?
Unit 1 • Perception Is Everything 69
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.