English 1A

Fall 2007

Seminar #8

Note:  Your seminar grade will be determined by the quantity of your responses (how many questions you answer and how many other students you respond to) and the quality (how well you demonstrate an understanding of the ideas you're responding to, how detailed your responses are, how coherent and in-depth they are, etc.)

Directions:
1.  Read George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant

2. Choose one questions and respond with 3-5 paragraphs. Include quotes and/or specific references to the text to back up your responses.

1.  Orwell’s Place: What is Orwell's role in Burma? How does he feel about this role, and by extension, the role of the British in Southeast Asia at the time?

2. Must: What does it mean when an elephant goes "must"? (You can find this word in the dictionary, or its variant, musth) What does the elephant symbolize in this story?

3.  Imperialism: What does Orwell mean when he claims that the incident showed him "the real nature of imperialism - the true motives for which despotic governments act"? What is the "true nature of imperialism" according to Orwell?

4. Orwell’s Purpose: Given what you know about Orwell's role in Burma, and how he felt about that role (while performing it, and years later, when he wrote this piece) why do you think Orwell wrote this essay? Where do you find some clues about why he may have written it?

3. Save your work as a .doc or .rtf document and submit your response to the Assignment Chamber by midnight on Monday, Nov. 19  

4. Post your responses to the appropriate forum by midnight on Monday, Nov. 26.

5. Read all the other students' posts throughout the week.

6. Respond to at least two other student's post (more is better) .  You will have until midnight, Monday, Nov. 26 to read and respond to the other students' ideas in the website.

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