December 07, 2004
Burmese Days Literary Club #2: Belly Laughs
I hope Graeme won't mind if I pre-empt his next posting, but since the original thread seems to have turned to a discussion of Northern Californian brewing (an honorable subject in itself I'm sure), it may be time to refresh. What follows are in the way of random thoughts about the first chapter.
I second Bobby's earlier comment: Orwell is much funnier than everyone remembers, isn't he? "'The editor will get six months' imprisonment for this,' he said finally. 'He does not mind. He says that the only time when his creditors leave him alone is when he is in prison.'" "U Po Kyin had furnished [his house] 'Ingaleik fashion' with a veneered sideboard and chairs, some lithographs of the Royal Family and a fire-extinguisher." OK, Wilde it's not (and I can't really see U Po Kyin speaking in polished drawing-room epigrams anyway), but it's chuckle-worthy stuff that the author doesn't get enough credit for.
Speaking of U Po Kyin, I can't help but think what a mint he could make as a "political researcher" these days.
When Ba Sein suggests inciting a mutiny in the prison, this is I suspect a reference to the riot at Rangoon Central Jail in June 1930, for which the Indian staff were subsequently blamed in the government inquiry. The tensions between British, ethnic Burmese, members of the other indigenous races, and diaspora Indians were quite complex, and the playing off of one people against another (not always by the imperialists) was very much a part of Burmese politics. I don't know how many people are aware of it, but the most dramatic event of Burmese Days' Act III - the ill-fated rebellion - is also based on a real-life uprising that happened a few years after Orwell left. When we get closer to that part of the story I'll elaborate on this a bit more.
I wonder if the "young English police officer" who once sat in U Po Kyin's best chair and drank a bottle of beer was an Old Etonian with a pencil moustache and a taste for carpentry?
"U Po Kyin turned away from the mirror. The appeal touched him a little. He never, when it could be done without inconvenience, missed a chance of acquiring merit. In his eyes his pile of merit was a kind of bank deposit, everlastingly growing. Every fish set free in the river, every gift to a priest, was a step nearer Nirvana. It was a reassuring thought. He directed that the basket of mangoes brought by the village headman should be sent down to the monastery." Orwell really had no time for private charity at all, did he?
Posted by Alan Allport at December 7, 2004 01:13 AMI hope Graeme won't mind if I pre-empt his next posting
Geez, get slow on posting about chapters three and four and look what happens! I'm pre-empted. At least call it 1A willya?
Seriously, your comments on the constituent elements of Burmese society playing off of each other has explained a lot to me. But how did this Indian diaspora happen in the first place? It seems to me that Orwell is saying that to be Indian in Burma is to have no respect from anyone-- the Burmese resent you as much as the British do.
I find the whole thing about Pagodas more an indicator toward the sort of anti-religious argument he employed in A Clergyman's Daughter.
Posted by: Graeme Burk at December 7, 2004 10:17 PMI'll defer to Alan A's knowledge of colonial history, but I believe South Asian Indians were persuaded to live throughout the British Empire to do lower-middle-class technical and commerce kinds of jobs. This unfairly made them butts for local resentment while also denying them the insulating effects of British color-privilege. In the post-colonial world there have been riots -- basically pogroms, if I understand correctly -- against ethnic Indians in the former British colonies of Tanzania and Fiji and I'm not sure where else. But I don't know the history of Indians in Burma specifically, apart from what's contained in Burmese Days.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at December 7, 2004 11:41 PMOrwell really had no time for private charity at all, did he?
In Burmese Days charity does not seem to be up his alley at all. Has anyone noticed one character treated with any compassion?
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at December 8, 2004 06:20 AMVeraswami is a Bengali babu - an educated, imperfectly-English speaking native who is both essential to the smooth running of the Empire and despised by everyone else within it. The attitude of colonial Brits towards people like Veraswami captures one of the paradoxes of imperialism: so much of the justification for the Empire was based on the idea of spreading Western civilization, yet those who received the largest helpings of this education were found contemptible and sinister. Contemptible because they had been 'de-raced', and had lost the authentic nobility of the native that colonists found so admirable in warrior-caste people like the Zulus and the Gurkhas; sinister because their very existence challenged the iron laws of racial determinism that buttressed the day-to-day business of Empire.
Posted by: Alan Allport at December 8, 2004 07:29 AMHas anyone noticed one character treated with any compassion?
One of the jokes of the novel is that Orwell is so mean-spirited towards his creations that he can't even let the villain have a happy ending, as we'll see later.
Posted by: Alan Allport at December 8, 2004 07:31 AM