joanna bujes wrote:
>
> At 03:28 PM 08/23/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> >I don't know the first, but the moral of Shooting an Elephant seems to
> >be how those damn natives won't let an honest imperial master consult
> >his own better feelings. How inconsiderate of those naughty children to
> >demand that the poor sensitive Massa put on a show for them.
>
> You missed the irony.
>
>
No, I just thought it was clumsy irony, and merely served partly to conceal his basic contempt for "natives." Some of the irony is self-directed, and like nearly all self-directed irony is pure fakery. It is his bumbling use of irony that leads me to call him small minded. That was my point in citing Johnson on Swift.
Carrol