The natives are described as "sneering" and "wretched" in Shooting an Elephant. Analyze this diction.

Well spotted. It is a curious fact that Orwell's feelings
towards the natives in Burma where he works seem to be ambivalent at best. He professes
sympathy for them and overtly opposes colonialism, but then goes on to talk about the
Burmese natives in rather derogatory ways, deriding them and belittling them. Note the
following example that comes from the opening paragraph of this fascinating
essay:

In the
end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted
after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my
nerves.

This is an
ambivalence that becomes more defined when Orwell says the following, in which Orwell
identifies the rather curious position he finds himself
in:

All I knew
was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the
evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job
impossible.

There is immense
irony in this statement, as although Orwell hates the notion of empire and the way that
it classifies some humans as being "better" and "more powerful" than others, at the same
time, he expresses the same kind of condescending and resentful attitude that
characterises empire and colonialism. Thus we can see how the diction in this essay
points towards a curioius ambivalence in Orwell himself and his thoughts and attitudes
towards colonialism and the people he has ostensibly gone to Burma to
rule.