Throughout history, writers have written about many different subjects based on their personal experiences. George Orwell, under the pseudonym of Eric Blair, was one of the most famous political writers of the twentieth century. He was born in Bengal, India in 1903 to an English Civil Servant. Failing to win a scholarship to a university, he went to Burma to serve in the Imperial Police as an assistant superintendent. Eventually Orwell's mounting dislike of imperialism led him to his resignation. His revelations of the behavior of the colonial officers appear in his essay "Shooting an Elephant." In this essay, Orwell describes an incident that, he suggests, demonstrates "the real nature of imperialism." This so-called imperialism found in "Shooting an Elephant" can be compared to that found in Joseph Conrad's literature of empire, Heart of Darkness.

In "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell demonstrates that no matter what one's beliefs, or position in society, no individual is absent from the immense pressure to conform. Orwell, a British police officer in Burma, allows an anxious crowd of locals to decid

Kurtz had lived in the Congo, and was separate from his own culture for quite some time. He had once been considered an honorable man, but the jungle changed him greatly. Here, secluded from the rest of his own society, he discovered his evil side and became corrupted by his power and solitude. Marlow tells about the ivory that Kurtz kept as his own, and that he had no restraint, and was "a tree swayed by the wind" (Conrad1994). Marlow mentions the human heads displayed on posts that "showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lust" (Conrad 2001). Conrad also tells us "his...nerves went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rights, which...were offered up to him" (Conrad 1995), meaning that Kurtz went insane and allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. It appears that while Kurtz had been isolated from his culture, he had become corrupted by this violent native culture, and allowed his evil side to control him just as Orwell had done in "Shooting an Elephant," as he succumbed to the pressure placed on him by the civilian crowd and shot the elephant.

Joseph Conrad's short story Heart of Darkness is about Man confronting his fears of failure, insanity, death, and cultural contamination, much like that found in Orwell's character in "Shooting an Elephant." During Marlow's mission to find Kurtz, he is also trying to find himself. He, like Kurtz, had good intentions upon entering the Congo, but these good intentions are soon altered by the influential mass of culture and dilemmas that the Congo possesses. Conrad tries to show us that Marlow is what Kurtz had been, and Kurtz is what Marlow could become. Marlow says about himself, "I was getting sav

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