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Burmese Days

George Orwell

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Feb 15, 2021 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

To say I liked it is not quite true. Its Orwell, so nothing is going to turn out well. He must have been a very unhappy man. Not that he was wrong, but to live in a world where people "ain't no good," 100 percent of the time has got to be depressing. Trying, and failing, to find one character who was a decent human being. Perhaps the Doctor? Perhaps Flory's servant? They were the least flawed. Flo was definitely the only completely good creature in the book, and it did her no good.
Is there any To say I liked it is not quite true. Its Orwell, so nothing is going to turn out well. He must have been a very unhappy man. Not that he was wrong, but to live in a world where people "ain't no good," 100 percent of the time has got to be depressing. Trying, and failing, to find one character who was a decent human being. Perhaps the Doctor? Perhaps Flory's servant? They were the least flawed. Flo was definitely the only completely good creature in the book, and it did her no good.
Is there any need for me to say that Orwell was no fan of Imperialism (though he did in fact work as a British Police officer in Burma). I guess he felt as helpless to do anything to improve the situation as Flory. I didn't really need to read this book, I know people are greedy and grasping and racist. I also didn't really think that Orwell hated Elizabeth (or any of the women); he really did seem to be making a strong case that the women (English or Burmese) were so limited in options by their cultures that they had no choice but to become the horrors they became. It was untenable that Elizabeth be a single woman - there was no way she could support herself, and no way a single woman would ever be treated with anything like respect. I think Orwell had good store of sympathy for the Burmese prostitutes as well. As little as they realized it, the Burmese and English women had a lot in common.

I wonder if Orwell and Steinbeck ever met? What did we do before google? They never met. They were both in London in 1943, but moved in completely different circles. I'd of thought they would have liked each other, but apparently Steinbeck didn't ever say anything about Orwell; and what little Orwell said about Steinbeck was not good. Orwell put Steinbeck on a personal list of "Stalinist Communists" that he kept. Seems more than a little harsh, from an avowed socialist. Orwell also, apparently, did not care for American writers in general, and was offended by the fact that Grapes of Wrath did so much better than the book he released in the same year. So, my vision of them hanging out, drinking a few beers complaining about the state of the world could not be more false. ...more

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