Burmese Days by George Orwell

(Book Review)

Why I Read This Book

          For too long now, I’ve been calling myself a George Orwell fan despite only ever having read a few of his books.  After having recently read a collection of Orwell’s essays, I decided it was time to move onto Burmese Days.

The Review

          Burmese Days was Orwell’s first novel, and was based on his experience as an Imperial British Police Officer in Burma, where he served from 1922-1927.  (The book wasn’t published until 1934, but as it is based loosely on Orwell’s own experiences, I’m assuming it represents life in Burma during the 1920s.) 

           

          Like a lot of lesser works by famous authors, this book both benefits and suffers by comparison to Orwell’s later novels.

            It benefits in the sense that (arguably) no one would still be reading Burmese Days these days if its author hadn’t also written 1984 and Animal Farm.

            But it suffers because it must inevitably be compared to Orwell’s later work.

            The contrived plot of Burmese Days, with the macguffin (W) of U Po Kyin’s scheming is probably unworthy of Orwell, as is the climax, which artificially forces a contrived resolution to the personal relationships of the characters. 

            But it’s only because it is Orwell that one would even think to complain about it.  If this was any other author, one would just accept the contrived plot and move on.  Because this is an Orwell book, the expectations are higher.  This book is nowhere near as good as 1984.  But then, what is?  1984 is a masterpiece. 

            But if the plot is the weak point of Burmese Days, the characters are the strong point.  They are lifelike, identifiable, and I saw many of my own strengths and weaknesses very clearly mirrored in the characters Orwell has created.

            Burmese Days is one of those books that is primarily a character study.  There are long sections of the book where nothing much really happens plot wise, but you spend a lot of time hanging out with the characters and really getting to know them.  Some people really like this kind of book, and some people really hate it, so I guess it’s best if the reader is warned beforehand.

            I normally don’t go in for this kind of book myself, but in this case the writing and the characterizations were so good that I thought Orwell pulled it off.  There were a couple times when I got a little bit restless (wondering where this story was going and when it was going to get there) but on the whole I enjoyed just observing these characters.

            (I know I was complaining about the plot earlier, but the plot really has very little to do with the book.  The plot is just an excuse for the novel to exist—it starts up at the beginning, goes away for most of the middle, and then comes back at the end to bring things to a conclusion.)

            The really great thing about this book is how completely Orwell has nailed the portrayal of expatriate life in Southeast Asia. 

            I’ve written - before about the tendency of expats to complain endlessly about the country they’re living in (something I’m not completely blameless about myself.)  And I think Orwell captures this atmosphere perfectly, with long scenes of Englishmen sitting in the club drinking all day complaining about the Burmese people.  (When describing the feeling of the British in Burma, Orwell writes “…most people can be at ease in a foreign country only when they are disparaging the inhabitants” –From Chapter 10.)

            Now, granted, my situation as an English teacher in 2014 is not exactly the same as the position of British Colonialists in 1920.  For one thing, the power dynamic was much different—they were actually ruling the natives they complained about.  Another difference is that it was much more accepted to be openly racist back in the 1920s.  The same type of complaints about the laziness and insolence of the natives still occur these days, but nowadays, all complaints always have to be prefaced with, “I’m not a racist but…..

           

            But the tendency of expatriates to continually disparage the inhabitants of the country they live in is still very much present, which is why I can so easily believe the portrait Orwell paints.  Although none of us actually lived through the age of colonialism, I don’t doubt that Orwell has captured its essence. 

            Here is one small excerpt from a longer conversation that Orwell describes in chapter 2:

           

            “…We’ve got to hang together and say, ‘We are the masters, and you beggars—’” Ellis pressed his small thumb down as through flattening a grub—“'you beggars keep your place!’”

            “Hopeless, old chap,” said Westfield.  “Quite hopeless.  What can you do with all this red type tying your hands?  Beggars of natives know the law better than we do.  Insult you to your face and then run you in the moment you hit ’em.  Can’t do anything unless you put your foot down firmly.  And how can you, if they haven’t the guts to show fight?”

            “Our burra sahib at Mandalay always said” put in Mrs Lackersteen, “that in the end we shall simply leave India.  Young men will not come out here any longer to work all their lives for insults and ingratitude.  We shall just go.  When the natives come to us begging us to stay, we shall say, ‘No, you have had your chance, you wouldn’t take it.  Very well, we shall leave you to govern yourselves.’  And then, what a lesson that will teach them.”

            “It’s all this law and order that’s done for us,” said Westfield gloomily.  The ruin of the Indian Empire through too much legality was a recurrent theme with Westfield.  According to him, nothing save a full-sized rebellion, and the consequent reign of martial law, could save the Empire from decay.  “All this paper-chewing and chit passing.  Office babus are the real rulers of this country now.  Our number’s up.  Best thing we can do is to shut up shop and let ’em stew in their own juice.”

            “I don’t agree, I simply don’t agree,” Ellis said.  “We could put things right in a month if we chose.  It only needs a pennyworth of pluck.  Look at Amritsar [W]  Look how they caved in after that.  Dyer knew the stuff to give them.  Poor old Dyer! [W]  That was a dirty job.  Those cowards in England have got something to answer for.”

            There was a kind of sigh from the others, the same sigh that a gathering of Roman Catholics will give at the mention of Bloody Mary.  Even Mr. Macgregor, who detested bloodshed and martial law, shook his head at the name of Dyer.

            “Ah, poor man! Sacrificed to the Paget M.P.s. Well, perhaps they will discover their mistake when it is too late.”

            My old governor used to tell a story about that,” said Westfield.  “There was an old havildar in a native regiment—someone asked him what’d happen if the British left India.  The old chap said—.”

            Flory pushed back his chair and stood up.  It must not, it could not—no, it simply should not go on any longer!  He must get out of this room quickly, before something happened inside his head and he began to smash the furniture and throw bottles at the pictures.  Dull boozing witless porkers! Was it impossible that they could go on week after week, year after year, repeating word for word the same evil-minded drivel, like a parody of a fifth rate story in Blackwood’s?  Would none of them ever think of anything new to say?  Oh, what a place, what people!  What a civilization is this of ours—this godless civilization founded on whisky, Blackwood’s and the ‘Bonzo’ pictures!  God have mercy on us, for all of us are a part of it.”

            There is a sense in which a fictional book, if it gives a literary picture of a time and place, can be of more historical value to future generations than a factual recounting of events.  No doubt, the Romans stationed up in Gaul probably had similar conversations to the ones Orwell recorded, but the Romans left us no literary picture of life in their colonies.  However centuries from now, when everyone who can remember the British Empire is long dead, Burmese Days will still give future generations a very accurate picture of the nature of colonialism.

Footnote 1: Although…given the tremendous amount of writing that did not survive the collapse of the Roman Empire, it’s entirely possible that the Romans actually might have written a similar book, but one which did not survive.  This in turn must make us cautious about assuming anything from our own age will survive a millennium.  But assuming Burmese Days survive the ages, its historical value will be immense.

Footnote 2: I should mention there is some dispute about the accuracy of Orwell’s picture of expatriate life in Burma.  According to this academic essay [LINK HERE], some of Orwell’s contemporaries accused him of exaggerating things.  But to me, it certainly feels like an accurate account of what the conversation among the 1920s British expatriates must have been.

The Climax

          I have mixed feelings about the climax of this book.

            On the positive side, given the slow pace of the book, and given how much time the reader spends getting to know the characters, when the climax of the novel finally comes it really feels like it’s earned—it feels like it’s something real and important because we’ve spent so long getting to know these characters.

            Also, after the reader has shared so long in the characters’ world of assumed superiority to the domicile Burmese, the reader shares their incredulity when the revolt finally does happen, and the sanctuary of the European club is actually violated.

            But on the other hand…the climax does sort of ruin the subtlety of the novel.  Part of me wanted to just see how the relationships described in the novel would have played out naturally without any outside interference, and I thought the climax kind of ruined things by forcing a resolution.

John Flory and Me

            I strongly identified with the main character John Flory.  In fact, I don’t remember the last time I identified so much with a character in a novel.

            [The last time I remember seeing my own personality so clearly in the characters of a novel was War and Peace , and even then it wasn’t just one character I identified with but aspects from many of them—for example in Pierre I identified with the social awkwardness, the immature youthful radicalism, the naïveté, and the poor judgment in relationships.  From Prince Andrei I identified with the pessimistic outlook, and from Prince Vasily I identified with the ability for self-deception, and the ability to convince yourself that you’re not being selfish even when you are.]

            At 35, John Flory is pretty much exactly my age (I’m 36 now.) 

            Like me, John Flory is described as coming to Asia when he was young and he got sucked into the excitement of life in Asia and the camaraderie that fosters among young men in an expatriate community, and enjoyed the quick and easy friendships, without quite realizing until it was too late that he was getting himself stuck in Asia in a career path that had a limited future.  As Orwell describes it:

            “He was young then, young enough for hero-worship, and he had friends among the men in his firm.  There were also shooting, fishing, and perhaps once in a year a hurried trip to Rangoon—pretext, a visit to the dentist. Oh, the joy of those Rangoon trips!  The rush to Smart and Mookerdum’s bookshops for the new novels out from England, the dinner at Anderson’s with beefsteaks and butter that had travelled eight thousand miles on ice, the glorious drinking-bout! He was too young to realize what this life was preparing for him.  He did not see the years stretching out ahead, lonely, eventless, corrupting. (from chapter 5).

            (It’s not so much an issue now that I’m living in Phnom Penh, but when I was living in the Japanese countryside I clearly remember what a treat it was to get into the big city and be able to go to English bookshops.)

            I also quite clearly identified with Flory’s desire to go home, yet his fear of facing home: “He was pining for England, though he dreaded facing it, as one dreads facing a pretty girl when one is collarless and unshaven.  When he left home he had been a boy, a promising boy and handsome in spite of his birthmark; now, only ten years later, he was yellow, thin, drunken, almost middle-aged in habits and appearance.” (from chapter 5).

            I also saw in myself John Flory’s cowardice, and his desire to avoid confrontation at all costs, even if it met sacrificing his moral principles to preserve social harmony in the Club.

            And furthermore, I saw in myself the same propensity for self-criticism that John Flory had, and in one section, Orwell’s description of how John Flory talked to himself sounded very similar to my own self-talk:

            “Cur, spineless cur,” Flory was thinking to himself, without heat, however, for he was too accustomed to the thought.  “Sneaking, idling, boozing, fornicating, soul-examining, self-pitying cur.  All those fools at the Club, those dull louts to whom you are so pleased to think yourself superior—they are all better than you, every man of them.  At least they are men in their oafish way.  Not cowards, not liars. Not half-dead and rotting.  But you—”

            Much of John Flory’s awkwardness with Elizabeth I also identified with.

            But after listing all those similarities, I should say there is also a limit to my point of identification.  (No one ever identifies with anyone else 100%.  We’re all too much individuals for that.)  John Flory’s depends on alcohol to get him through the day in a way that I never could—not because I’m a saint, but just because my body reacts badly to alcohol, and alcohol puts me to sleep.  I could never drink gin throughout the day like John Flory does, and I especially couldn’t drink it in the morning.  However, if you substitute my dependence on coffee for Flory’s dependence on gin, then perhaps you could argue for an equivalence after all?

            I’m curious how much of himself Orwell put into the character of John Flory.  John Flory worked in private business in Burma, whereas Orwell was with the Imperial Police.  However, much like Flory, Orwell reportedly shunned European society in Burma, and instead got on well with the natives (W).  Orwell also, like Flory, was one of the few Europeans in Burma who made an effort to learn the language.  (Another way in which I’m not like Flory and Orwell.  I have, to my shame, done a terrible job here in Cambodia of learning the language—although I did tolerably well learning the local language back when I was in Japan).  Orwell would have been much younger than Flory during his time in Burma, but about he would have been about the same age as Flory by the time he got around to writing the book.

Elizabeth Lackersteen

          I have one small nitpick about the character of Elizabeth Lackersteen—namely that she was too negative about Burma from the beginning.

            Modern psychology has shown that culture shock has four stages.  The first stage is the honeymoon stage, in which everything about the new country is new and wonderful.  Only after passing through the honeymoon stage (about the 2 or 3 month mark) do people become overly negative about the country they are living in.

            It makes sense that all the old-jaded expatriates in the European club should be negative about Burma—much as Orwell describes.  But Elizabeth Lackersteen should have gone through a period of interest and fascination about her new country.  Instead, Orwell portrays her as wanting nothing to do with Burma and the Burmese right from the beginning.

            I suspect this oversight might be because the psychological research on culture shock, and the 4 stages model, probably came after Orwell’s time.  And perhaps I’m being overly prescriptive by insisting that his characters follow this psychology model.  But, the four stages of culture shock very closely model my own experience, and the experience of the other people I’ve watched.  I’ve never seen anyone be negative about a new country upon first arriving, so I have a hard time believing that this would be Elizabeth Lackersteen’s reaction.  (Although, I don’t know, maybe back in the 1920s racism might have been more of a factor?  Britains might have absorbed a disdain for the native inhabitants of their colonies even before they got off the boat, which would cause them to bypass the honeymoon stage?  Perhaps?)

Other Observations

* Another similarity between Burmese Days and modern expatriate life in Southeast Asia is the excess drinking.  Although I wonder if the causes might be different now.  The way Orwell describes it, the expatriates drink throughout the day in Burmese Days because of the boredom of their lives. 

            Nowadays, one suspects that because of the cheapness and availability of alcohol in Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia attracts European alcoholics rather than produces them.

* According to Wikipedia (W), Orwell was greatly influenced by E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.  As someone who has not read A Passage to India, but has seen the movie, I can attest that there are a number of similarities in the plot.

* For my other takes on Orwell books, see my review of Homage to Catalonia here, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying here. 

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