"It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every steam-roller But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives ; ands so, in general, he wasn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to the grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do. In this paragraph George Orwell highlights the procedure and explains why he must shoot the elephant. At this point in the piece the narrator is quite distant from the elephant, talking about the social pressures that compel him to kill the elephant, not the moral ramifications of the act. This is clear in the systematic explanation of his plan and the dangers associated with killing this majestic beast. George Orwell uses the key term "ought in the first sentence of this paragraph. This syntax portrays the idea that Orwell is still undecided as what to do in this part of the story. He also mentions the alternative; that if the elephant "took no notice of [him], it would be safe to leave [the elephant] until the mahout came back . By presenting the other logical alternative direction, Orwell further reveals his objection to killing this beast. Orwell then goes on to explaining his main motives for comple