A Passage About India. (Burmese Days - George Orwell)

Member Name: jatkinson100

Product:	Burmese Days - George Orwell
Date:	08/12/00 (3253 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The writing is superb, bringing Imperial India into the minds of me, a 21st Century boy.

Disadvantages: Overlooked in favour of 1984 and Animal Farm. They are great works and should be read, but this should be on everyone's reading list too.

Burmese Days is Orwell's first fictional novel to be published, and is, characteristically, a work of genius. Orwell takes memories and thoughts of his time as India, as a child and later in the Indian Imperial Police Force, and turns hem into a masterpiece. Orwell's works are often hidden by the light of his more famous non-fictional works, and, of course, 1984 and Animal Farm. It is because of this that his other works would have been far more widely known had they been written by someone else, but then who could challenge Orwell's gift with a pen?

Burmese Days can be read a lot like A Passage to India, another great work, even with the main Indian contingent being Doctors (Aziz in A Passage to India and Veraswami here). The main character is, however, an Englishman named Flory who is a timber merchant in Burma. The other main character is a Budhist named U Po Kyin, a local magistrate. He can be likened to Shakespeare's Iago as he dictates the goings on in Kyauktada, scheming and manipulating throughout the novel.

The story shows the worst side of Imperialism and how it exploits, and also the worst side of the native stock who use and abuse eachother and their "masters" in order to live the Imperialist Dream. Imperial India is shown as a hard place, with even harder people. Do not read this novel for a happy ending as you will only be dissappointed! In Burma the tough get tougher and the soft only suffer.

Flory is the exception to the Imperialist rule, befriending Dr. Veraswami and shunning his colonial bretheren, and for this he suffers. He also has the misfortune to have a large, red birth-mark on his face, hence his choosing a job in the middle of the jungle where he can hide himself away. He treats his servant and his workers, most of the time, well, and for this he is ridiculed and deplored. For a time he lies on the edge of the inner circle of ex-pats, and falls in love with a visiting lady. The love is, h
owever, not requited, plainly and simply due to Flory's unpopularity with the gossip mongers and those who "matter". This love and shunning leads to a terrible end even though Flory is one of the few laudible characters, and at one point is even the hero of the moment.

As with Flory, Veraswami's fate is not good. For no reason but his popularity with one of the ruling classes, and his closeness, as a doctor, to the hub of Imperial goings-on, U Po Kyin takes a venomous and terrible dislike to him. Shunned by the British because of his race, and shunned by his countrymen because of his religion and percieved threat to others in high places, Veraswami falls with Flory into a pit of despair whose slopes are greased by U Po Kyin and his henchmen.

U Po Kyin succeeds in all that he desires, destroying his enemies, forcing failure upon them, and gaining a step or two up the ladder of Imperial India. As I said, he can easily be seen as Orwell's Iago; manipulative, ruthless, brilliant, evil.

It is hard to say much about this book (or any, really) as I hope that you will read it, and I don't want to give too much away. Its content is very different to that of 1984 and Animal Farm, though one can see a similarity in style between this novel and 1984. Orwell's strength lies in his development of the sub-plot, and one can easily read a book of his which has three or more stories running alongside eachother, but never get lost in his words. He switches chapters from one character to another, scenes and scenarios change constantly, but one is never dewildered and never bored by one or the other. Orwell suspends your disbelief as he takes you back, mind if not body, to Imperial India and its heat, torment, and hardship. Many of the characters are no longer really relavent to today's society, but one comes to understand them, to know them, to empathise with them, and, sometimes, to love or loathe them.

Orwell did n
ot write this as a history, but it should be rememdered and read long into the future, a memory of the ugliness, and the beauty, that man can achieve, and as a testament to the strength, and vulnerability, of him.

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