Dave's Book Blog: "Burmese Days" by George Orwell

Friday, 28 June 2024

"Burmese Days" by George Orwell

The debut novel by the author of Animal Farm and 1984.

The plot centres on the relationship between Flory, a lonely sahib who has been too long in Burma, who loves the country and the people, and Elizabeth, a young girl just arrived who needs to get married to avoid poverty and the incestuous advances of her alcoholic uncle. The sub-plot involves the need for the club, against all the instincts of its white members, to elect a native to membership. Villainous magistrate U Po Kyin plots (why is it always baddies who drive narratives, so much so that the word plot both means to conspire and to construct a narrative?) to discredit the good Doctor Veeraswami so he will win the election. Throw in a love rival for Flory, a local rebellion and any amount of racism and we have the making of a great novel with a strong plot, some beautifully developed characters, and an exotic setting.

The discussion at the club in chapter two is an incredible indictment of chauvinism and, as such, there is much use of terribly racist language, and the n-word. But this is the reason why it is necessary to retain uncensored and unexpurgated version of historical texts: it is the intention that matters. This use of the n-word is in order to condemn racism. The purpose of this whole novel, even with one of the indigenous characters being a corrupt villain, is to open eyes to the horrors of racism. It's important to defend the artist's right to say such things.

Selected quotes:

"He was a man of fifty, so fat that for years he had not risen from his chair without help, and yet shapely and even beautiful in his grossness; for the Burmese do not sag and bulge like white men, but grow fat symmetrically, like fruits swelling." (Ch 1)
"His practice ... was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the case of strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for impartiality." (Ch 1)
"No European cares anything about proof. When a man has a black face, suspicion is proof." (Ch 1)
"All his meals were swift, passionate and enormous; they were not meals so much as orgies, debauches of curry and rice." (Ch 1)
"Poor chap ... regular martyr to booze, eh? Look at it oozing out of his pores. Reminds me of the old colonel who used to sleep without a mosquito net. They asked his servant why and the servant said: 'At night, master too drunk to notice mosquitoes; in the morning, mosquitoes too drunk to notice master'." (Ch 2)
"The only way I can even keep a servant is to pay their wages several months in arrears." (Ch 2)
"In my young days, when one's butler was disrespectful, one sent him along to the jail with a chit saying 'Please give the bearer fifteen lashes' Ah, well, eheu fugaces!" (Ch 2)
"Creeping round the world building prisons. They build a prison and call it progress." (Ch 3) Flory thus characterises the spread of the British Empire, alluding to the Agricola by Tacitus which has a British chieftain rallying his troops to resist the spread of the Roman Empire in the first century AD by saying: "Where they make a desert they call it peace."
"Beauty is meaningless until it is shared." (Ch 4)
"There is a prevalent idea that men at the 'outposts of Empire' are at least able and hardworking. It is a delusion. ... The real work of administration is done mainly by native subordinates and teal backbone of despotism is not the officials but the Army. Given the Army, the officials and the business men can rub along safely enough even if they are fools. And most of them are fools." (Ch 5)
"Free speech is unthinkable. All other kinds of freedom are permitted. You are free to be a drunkard, an idler, a coward, a backbiter, a fornicator; but you are not free to think for yourself." (Ch 5)
"Her whole code of being was summed up in one belief, and that a simple one. It was that the Good ('lovely' was her name for it) was synonymous with the expensive, the elegant, the aristocratic; and the Bad ('beastly') is the cheap, the low, the shabby, the laborious. Perhaps it is in order to teach this creed that expensive girls' schools exist." (Ch 7)
"The peasants steamed garlic from all their pores." (Ch 13)
"Our motto, you know, is, 'In India, do as the English do'." (Ch 13)
"Blessed are they who are stricken only with classifiable diseases! Blessed are the poor, the sick, the crossed in love, for at least other people know what is the matter with them and will listen to their belly-achings with sympathy. But who that has not suffered it understands the pain of exile?" (Ch 15)
"His Urdu consisted mainly of swearwords, with all the verbs in the third person singular." (Ch 18)
"Like all sons of rich families, he thought poverty disgusting and that poor people are poor because they prefer disgusting habits." (Ch 18)
"What's it got to do with you if he needed kicking? You're not even a member of this Club. It's our job to kick the servants, not yours." (Ch 18) Not even a thought as to whether anyone was justified in kicking another human being!

This is an excoriation of the disgusting racism of the British Empire. Yes, there are flat characters (eg Ellis) but Flory and Elizabeth are drawn with three-dimensional empathy. Orwell at his best is so much better than 1984!

June 2024; 300 pages.