Clarity, George Orwell, and the Pedagogy of Prose Style; Or, How Not to Teach “Shooting an Elephant”

Although Orwell's essays—particularly “Shooting an Elephant”—are used in freshman composition classes as stylistic models of clarity for student to imitate, this practice is pedagogically unsound because Orwell's essays are examples of the contemplative essay, whose aims are very different from those of the expository prose students learn to write in composition classes.