The purpose is to intensify and darken the tone of the essay and make the elephant seem like a ferocious, beast-like creature. Orwell describes the setting as a “cloudy, stifling morning at the beginning of the rains” (2). By making the setting dark, it foreshadows that something bad will happen later in the story, intensifying the plot. Furthermore, Orwell describes hearing the screams of an old lady and seeing a dead man, killed by the elephant, lying in the mud. It is illustrated that the skin of the dead man was stripped “with the same care with which a rabbit is skinned” (3), by the elephant. This creates vivid images in the readers' minds, allowing them to imagine this horrific scene in their minds. By adding these gruesome details, Orwell manages to intensify the dramatic conflict of