Orwell writes, "The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at" (Orwell)
The elephant is also a symbol for humanity in general, emphasizing the notion that no one should suffer under the rule of anyone else. Asker maintains that the elephant "comes to represent a complex symbol of the Burmese people and the tide of historical contradiction that threatens (literally and metaphorically) to overwhelm the colonial ruler" (Asker 154)
He literally hates where he is and is aware that those he feels pity for hate him. He realizes that he is an "absurd puppet" (Orwell 338) wearing a "mask" (338)
In many cases, the world did not conceive imperialism as a collaborated effort of many individuals, but rather that of a single nation. However, by placing the point-of-view as a personal first person, Orwell returns a sense of immediacy and power to those individuals involved in the happenings of imperialism, "I was hated by large numbers of people -- the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen," (Orwell, 646)
The narrator describes the scene of the village as using the native terms, yet juxtaposes this with eloquent English adjectives, "It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside," (Orwell, 650). It is the description of a scene as witness from an outsider, (Rodden, 390)
However, it is an interesting twist that the narrator moves from one puppeteer to another, from the British crown to the Burmese people, "Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd -- seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the wall of those yellow faces behind," (Orwell, 650). Orwell himself was helpless in a foreign land, (Stevens, 2008)