He takes his rifle along, not to shoot the elephant, but to scare it and to defend himself, if necessary. In fact, he repeatedly asserts that he “had no intention of shooting the elephant”. When the natives see him with the rifle, they start shouting excitedly that he is going to shoot the elephant. Seeing the look on their faces, he realised that he would have to shoot the elephant after all. It is the incident of the shooting of the elephant, which illuminated for him the ‘futility of the white man’s dominion in the East’.