After reading the two articles titled "Shooting an Elephant" and "Salvation", there is one theme that both passages share. In both stories, there is some sort of task that everyone else in the story expects the protagonist to complete. This task has to be complete because that is how they will become accepted into society, or because it's the "right" thing to do. In life, sometimes we feel like we have to do things, although we really don't want t 
o, in order to keep others satisfied. We might want to do these things because we do not want to lose that person as a friend or we feel like they'll stop talking to us.
In most cases during the years of adolescence, children do things in order to fit in with other kids in their class. Sometimes, kids will act up in class in order to get other kids to laugh or think that they are cool. After middle school, as kids go into high school, they start trying to find themselves as individuals. They start to ask themselves "who do I want to be as a person, and who do I not want to be?" I would know because I literally just went through this. Unfortunately this is much tougher in high school because you have kids who seem like they're the fun crowd or the ideal "cool friends" who do things such as using drugs, drinking alcohol until they can't stand up straight, or having underage sex. This might influence that once innocent kid to try to be like those kids doing all those illegal activities, although he/she may not really want to.
Even after high school, we face these situations later in life; even during adulthood. For example, you might have to go to dinner with your significant others parents although you may really not want to. You do anyways just because you know that it would make your partner happy. The two articles "Shooting an Elephant" and "Salvation" have situations somewhat similar to these. In "Shooting an Elephant", the protagonist is a sub-divisional police officer in Moulmein, in lower Burma. He is mistreated my the townsfolk and verbally abused daily by anyone passing by. He is treated like trash until an elephant is wrecking houses in the town. All As the protagonist gets a rifle and goes to see what the elephant is doing, the people of the town begin following him in excitement to see him shoot the elephant although he tells himself that he is not going to. As he faces the now calm elephant, he faces the decision of whether he should shoot it or not. He almost can't bare the thought of hurting the animal, but to keep the townspeople satisfied, he shoots the elephant multiple times in attempt to end its slow, painful death.
"Salvation" has a nearly similar plot to this because as the protagonist "Langston" goes to church with his aunt, he sits with the young children who are 
getting ready to meet Jesus. His aunt tells him that when he is saved, he will see a light and feel that Jesus has accepted him. He never does unfortunately. When he notices that he is the last child sitting unsaved by Jesus while everyone is praying for him and confused as to why he isn't saved, he decides to do what a false accuser before him did and just get up off the bench and say that he was saved in order to keep everyone else satisfied. He didn't want to do this, and it's clear that he felt that way when he goes home and cries because he feels that he will never meet Jesus.
As you can see, in both stories, the main character does something that they do not want to in order to keep others happy. This is similar to actual life, where we do things in order to keep others happy. Like Langston and the police officer in Moulmein, sometimes in life we need to make decisions. These decisions might please others, and other decisions might not please others. Unfortunately the decision that displeases others is sometimes the morally right thing to do, for ourselves.