Summary Assignment

Read the following essay, Shooting an Elephant (Webpage) by George Orwell.

This assignment requires you to write objectively about an argumentative piece. Remember the rules of accurate summary as discussed in your Readings. Construct a thorough, objective summary of George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant.” Your audience for this summary is an interested reader who has not read the piece and does not know much about it. Do not use outside sources to construct this summary. You may quote from the source material, but do not include more than two sentences of quotation from Orwell’s writing. The majority of the piece must be your own paraphrase of his story. No personal opinion or evaluation of the material should be present within the summary. However, your summary should accurately report on the position(s) that Orwell takes within the piece. You may choose to include one line of summary that describes the context of the piece (information that includes its original publication date and place, for instance).

You may choose to organize this piece either by writing a summary that details the piece in the order it occurs or by writing a summary that prioritizes Orwell’s points/stories in terms of their overall importance to the audience.The summary should be at least eight sentences in length but no more than 12 sentences in length.


The evaluation for this summary will be based on the Summary Rubric.