Hopefully, I’ll get in to NYU when I’m seventeen. I want to major in literature or journalism; either’s fine by me, as long as I can write to my heart’s content. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just too lucky. I can already see my future, living in Manhattan and drinking Arizona tea while wearing a hoodie against the New York cold.

    However, this vision of my future self recently took a hit as the shocking death of a seventeen-year-old who was shot for seemingly wearing a hoodie and walking outside in the middle of the night. Trayvon Martin, seventeen, young, loves Skittles and Arizona tea. He won’t go to college now. What if he were me?

    The Trayvon Martin case’s situation reminded me, in a way, of Eric Arthur Blair. More commonly known as George Orwell, he was an English novelist and journalist who lived most of his life in England and in the British colonies within India. He worked as an officer in Burma, and he was forced to shoot an elephant, as he describes in his piece "Shooting an Elephant." He describes the elephant as having a "grandmotherly air" and recounts how he didn’t want to shoot the animal, but the Burman Indians were devilishly expecting him to kill it. After shooting it, he tried to justify his actions, claiming that "legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it."

    However, Orwell didn’t really feel this in his heart, because he claimed, "I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool." Orwell didn’t want to embarrass himself, so he masked his true emotions to appear confident.

    George Zimmerman is the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot Martin. He claimed that he shot Martin solely in self-defense. Martin was seventeen, unarmed and holding only colorful snacks and tea on that night. Zimmerman was able to leave jail after posting $150,000 bond, and he awaits trial on a second-degree murder charge. The trial is set for some time in 2013. According to media reports, Zimmerman is losing weight and suffering from high levels of stress.

    Maybe those who are in favor Zimmerman view justice blindly, or maybe they are literally blind. To me, I see George Orwell and George Zimmerman as twins; identical in the sense that both of them let their emotions get the better of them in what would become a moment in their lives. They had used sufficient pretext of not looking like a fool in order to save themselves. It wasn’t evil; it was a childish MO.

    I’m almost seventeen, and I don’t view things by how they appear, but by what element they represent. Martin was Orwell’s elephant; both died and received little-to-no respect after their last breath. One was in a hoodie, the other in plain gray skin.