The assignment for Introduction to Fiction and Non-Fiction course was Drama version of Shooting and Elephant.
Shooting an Elephant Drama Version
Prepared by,
Mst. Afra Anam,
Main Characters:
The Narrator: Young Englishman serving as a police officer in Burma in the 1920s, when Burma was part of British-controlled India. He strongly opposes the oppressive British rule of Burma and the rest of India.
Sub-Inspector: Burmese officer who calls the narrator for help after an elephant gets loose in town.
Black Dravidian Coolie: Indian laborer from the town of Coringa, India, who is killed by the elephant. A Dravidian is a lower-caste Indian who speaks his own language, Dravidian.
Police Orderly: Person who fetches an elephant gun for the narrator.
Mahout: Owner of the elephant. He becomes very angry after learning that the narrator has killed his elephant. A mahout is a skilled elephant trainer and handler.
Other Characters:
Indian Constables
Crowd of Townspeople
British Who React to the Shooting.
Site: Moulmein in Lower Burma.
Time: Morning
[In an Old building, red colored, high ceiling with long doors like buildings in 1920s the sunlight has started giving its light. Inside the building is off white colored with polestar coming out of sidewalls. Windows has been broken long since. Instead jute sacks are observed used as curtain. As a whole the building is a wreckage of some ancient monarchy. In one room, a young Englishman is sitting on a chair, looking on a file kept on his table. Nearby, a dog is burking although it didn’t keep his concentration away from the file. It seems that he has found something interesting in it. With his pen he taking note and thinking where is the end of the imperialism acting over here. The Burmese do not realize that he, too, opposes English occupation of Burma. In his position, he sees the misery that imperialism produces. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos—all these oppressed creates guilt for him. So here he is walking a line between anti-imperialism and "the evil spirited little beasts who tried to make his job impossible. Suddenly a phone rang up and he picked up the phone with disturbed voice]
Narrator:Hello
The sub- inspector: Officer?
Narrator: Yes, speaking.
The Sub Inspector: Listen to me carefully. An elephant is ravaging the bazaar.
Narrator: What? Elephant ?
The Sub Inspector: Yes, Would you come and do something about it?
Narrator: Don’t panic. I will be there as soon as I got myself armed.
The Sub Inspector: Please come soon. We are waiting.
[He don’t know what he do but he wants to see what is happing &he get on a pony &start out, he take his rifile,an old .44Winchester&much too small to kill an elephant, but he thinks the noise might be useful in terrorism. Then he leaves his destination].
Site: On the way
Time: Few minutes later.
The Narrator: Please tell me about the elephant’s doing?
The Burmese people: It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which has gone must. It has been chained up, as tame elephant always are when their attact of must is due, but on the previous night it had been broken its chain escaped.
The Narrator: Has the elephant caused any harm?
The Burmese people: It had already destroyed somebodys hut, killed cow& raided some fruiy stall &devoured the stock.
Site: Police Quarter
Time: few minutes later
[It is a poor quarter, a labyrinth of dirty bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hill side. Some people saying that the elephant had gone in one direction, others that he had gone in another. There is loud, scandalized cry of go away , child! go away this instant!& an old man with a seitch in her hand came around the corner in the hut. This is the rainy season & the ground is soft.]
The Narrator: [ Hurridly] Has the elephant harmed any man?
The Sub Inspector: [Surprisingly], Thank God you arrived.
The Narrator: Any causality?
The Burmese people: Yes, an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie.
Old woman: Go away child. Go away this instant. [Few distance away, there was a loud scandalized cry]
[the was the Black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, he could not have been dead any minutes. He is lying on his belly with arms crucified &head sharply twisted to one side, his face is coated with mud, the eye wide open]
The sub-inspector to Orderly: Go to my friend's house and borrow an Elephant rifle, the order.
The Orderly: Yes Sir.
[The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle &five cartridge &meanwhile some Burmese people has arrived & that the elephant is in the paddy fields bellow]
Site: Paddy Field
Time: Noon
[The Narrator noticed that the elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards them. At first he didn't want to kill it. Burmese people didn't like him but with the magical rifle in his hands he was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly he realized that he should have to shoot the elephant. Then he pulled the trigger. At the third time, that was the shot that did for the elephant. The elephant took half an hour to die.]
The End
