George Orwell is Tricking the Audience

So far I believed that fallacies were only used when you wanted to win an argument. After reading Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell I realized that he uses fallacies while telling us a story. Most of the times, when we are telling a story, we want our audience to side with us. We want to make them feel what we felt. So why not use fallacies? A great example is we when two of your friends are fighting. They both tell you their side of the story, hoping that you will sympathy with either of them and chose a side. The best way to achieve this is by using pathos, just as George Orwell did.

Just as Gandhi, George Orwell has the skill of hidden the fallacies within the text. It´s not that easy to find his fallacies. He is pretty skillful on using pathos, so that the audiences will sympathy with him. Some examples are when he states, “… I was hated by large numbers of people,” and “…in reality I was only absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind me.” In both cases he wants the audience to feel pity for him and take his side of the story. Don’t we all do the same? How many friends have really messed things up at a party and blame in it on the alcohol? Or in class how many of us have used the excuse that we were sick last Friday and weren't able to post the homework? We are constantly trying to manipulate our audience by making them feel pity for us.

Now lets leave pathos behind and start talking about false choices. A good example that I found was when he states, “I had to shoot the elephant.” Did he really? Was anyone else putting a gun to his head threaten to use his life over the elephant? No, so why declare that he had to use it. And this is what false choices are all about. He is making us believe that he had no other choice when in reality he had a ton. Would everyone be able to spot such fallacy? No, only those who are dedicated enough to re-read his speech several time and spot his fallacies.

Ok so lets move on to my last point: hasty generalization. If you have taken AP Language and Composition with Tangen you better know what it means, but for those who don’t here is a brief explanation. According to Heinrich is a “vast conclusion with scanty data” (144). When Orwell states, “I was young and ill-educated and I had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishmen in the East.” Do we have enough evidence that EVERY Englishmen had the same problems? No. So that’s why I would consider this a hasty generalization just as Gabriela Aldana stated on her blog.

Congratulations George Orwell on doing a great job on hiding your fallacies! Since I’m sure that there are a few persons that bought completely your story and actually sympathy with you.