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Chapter 20
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Burmese Days, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Imperialism and Hypocrisy
Status and Racism
Class, Gender, and Sex
Freedom of Speech, Self-Expression, and Loneliness
Friendship and Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
On June 1, the day of the club’s general meeting, Flory enters the club lounge and finds Westfield. Westfield mentions that Maxwell won’t come to the meeting because he can’t leave camp but has arranged for Ellis to vote on his behalf. Suddenly, Flory hears Elizabeth’s voice from the next room and is painfully, emotionally affected. Macgregor, Ellis, and Mr. Lackersteen arrive, and Macgregor presents the club’s accounts. Meanwhile, Flory worries about nominating Dr. Veraswami and about Elizabeth overhearing the others’ attacking him. He looks out the window and sees a boat rowing hard down the river.
When Flory worries about Elizabeth’s reaction to his nomination of Dr. Veraswami for Club membership, it reminds readers of the social consequences Flory will face for loyalty to his non-white friend in the white-supremacist social context of the European Club: the nomination will lower Flory’s social status and cause the other British people in Kyauktada to criticize and resent him.
Themes
Macgregor introduces the topic of electing a native member to the club. Ellis, using a racial slur, expostulates that “after everything” he thought the topic had been dropped. Meanwhile, through the window, Flory sees the boat embark and notices its Burmese crew carrying “a long, awkward-shaped bundle” ashore. Macgregor tells Ellis that the command to induct a native member into the European Clubs comes from the Commissioner, but that if the club votes unanimously against it, the Commissioner won’t press the issue. Ellis, Westfield, and Mr. Lackersteen claim to be unanimously against it.
When Ellis refers to the topic of electing a non-white man coming up “after everything,” he seems to refer to the tiny rebellion in Thongwa. Ellis’s desire to blame and persecute all non-white people for a minor (and largely fabricated) rebellion shows his virulent racism yet again. At the same time, Westfield and Mr. Lackersteen’s votes against accepting a non-white man into the Club show that Ellis is not an outlier: most of the British people in Kyauktada want to preserve their high status in the racial hierarchy by excluding and oppressing non-white people—oppression that gives the lie to imperial British claims that colonization is supposed to “uplift” colonized peoples.
Themes
Flory wishes he hadn’t promised to elect Veraswami but is determined not to break his promise—though not so long ago he would have broken it. He stands and proposes to elect Veraswami to the club. The other members shout, and Ellis, using a racial slur, insults Flory. As Ellis pitches a fit, a Burmese man at the veranda railing calls for their attention. The Burmese men from the boat carry into the club lounge their six-foot-long bundle and unwrap it. It’s the corpse of Maxwell, who was murdered by the relatives of the fleeing rebel he killed.
Flory’s determination not to break his promise to Dr. Veraswami illustrates two things. First, U Po Kyin was initially right but ultimately wrong to claim that no white man would be loyal to a non-white friend and that Flory was a coward. Second, though Elizabeth herself is racist and narrow minded, Elizabeth’s effect on Flory has been to recommit him to freedom of thought and speech, including speech against British racism. Yet when Maxwell suddenly appears as a corpse—murdered in retaliation for his brutal and unnecessary violence against a disarmed “rebel”—it seems to foreshadow British retaliation against the Burmese and British prejudice against non-white people generally, thus likely scuttling Veraswami’s nomination to the Club.
Themes
