“A situation in which one country has a lot of power or influence over others, especially in political and economic matters. ” This is how the Cambridge dictionary defines the term imperialism. A term closely related to imperialism is “colonialism,” which is described as “the belief in and support for the system of one country controlling another. These are terminologies that are often used to describe the situation in the British Empire, where Great Britain had colonized a quarter of the world. The already established civilizations that were colonized were forced to acclimatize and adapt to the Western way of life, which led to tensions between the natives and the colonists. The literary works “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell and “The White Man's Burden” by Rudyard Kipling both express the weight of imperialism and the tension of Europeans imposing their ideals on indigenous populations, which they do through literary devices and language . features including images and various symbols. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay “The White Man's Burden” is a poem written by Rudyard Kipling and published in 1899, also subtitled “The United States and the Philippines” – and its message is for America to take Spain out of dominion of the Philippine Islands. The poem encourages people to take on the so-called white man's burden, which the poem describes as sending the best men you have out of the country and your sons into exile to serve your captives, because these "newly discovered" people are crazy, uninhabited and at the same time immature and diabolical. There are seven stanzas in Kipling's poem, and each begins with "Take the White Man's burden," and then the rest of the verse explains what that burden consists of. The poem is full of cultural imperialism, with the superior English in a place of “grim” brutes and imposing their own civilizing behaviors and institutions. Racism comes out in “The White Man's Burden” quite clearly. We can read in the first stanza that the Indians, or “captive people,” are “surly people,” described as “half child and half devil.” They are shown "good ways", but behave in an abusive and unappreciative manner towards the people who want to improve them. Of course, this approach makes sense to us today: why doesn't it make sense for native peoples to eagerly embrace the vicious and humiliating imperialist ways of another nation? - although Kipling seems to be curious as to why these people were not grateful and did not thank their "enlightening" conquerors. George Orwell wrote "To Shoot an Elephant" in 1936 about a conflicted period in his life while working as a policeman in colonial Burma, serving the British Empire. This particular novel examines an internal war that Orwell feels in his role as an officer of the British Empire and in remaining faithful to the law. The narrator receives a telephone and tells him about an elephant that is ravaging the bazaar. He takes his hunting rifle with him and goes down to where the animal is presumably hiding. After a fatality is reported, the narrator orders an elephant gun and locates the now calm animal. At first he has no intention of killing the elephant and feels that killing such a beautiful animal is a mistake. Then he sees the huge crowd of Burmese surrounding him and is faced with a dilemma. The crowd wants him to be in for a show and expects him to maintain the display of power he is expected to make as a British officer. The novel ends with him challenging his moral compass and shooting the elephant. Fire the rifle a couple of times before that. ’’