The Spike is a essay by George Orwell in which he details his experience staying overnight in the casual ward of a workhouse (colloquially known as a "spike") near London. A Hanging describes the execution of a criminal. Bookshop Memories is a reminiscence of his time spent working as an assistant in a second-hand bookshop. Shooting an Elephant describes the experience of the English narrator, possibly Orwell himself, called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant while working as a police officer in Burma.