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Chapter 4
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
Though drunk, Flory can’t sleep when he returns from the club because feral dogs are barking—and one in particular is barking at his house. Eventually, he takes his rifle, goes outside, and aims it at the dog. Then, considering how badly the recoil will bruise his shoulder, he starts walking around his little garden and calling himself names like “spineless cur.”
Flory calls himself a “spineless cur”—“cur” being a negatively connoted word for dog—while aiming his gun at a dog. His choice of words hints that when he aims the gun at the dog, he is really feeling self-hatred, likely due either to the hypocrisy of British colonial presence in Burma or to his own inability to speak up for his beliefs to the other more conservative, racist British people in Kyauktada.
Themes
In a flashback to earlier that evening, Westfield brings to the club a copy of the Burmese Patriot with the article insulting Macgregor. Ellis and Westfield are furious, while Flory pretends to be. Ellis decides that Dr. Veraswami must have written the article and, using a racial slur, writes on the message board that given the article, they won’t consider electing a non-white man to the club just then. After Westfield convinces Ellis to cross out the racial slur, he, Maxwell, and Flory also sign Ellis’s message. Flory signs it because he is too cowardly to fight the others.
Here, fulfilling U Po Kyin’s prediction that white British people aren’t loyal to their non-white friends in the colonies, Flory betrays Dr. Veraswami by signing Ellis’s notice against allowing non-white people into the European Club—after he told Dr. Veraswami that he would support Veraswami’s election to the Club if the issue arose.
Themes
Flory believes that his “trouble” comes from his birthmark. He recalls how his classmates in grammar school nicknamed him “Blueface” and “Monkey Bum”—until his skillfulness in football, lying, and bullying got him a place in the in-crowd. Afterward, Flory went to a low-quality public school that mimicked posh schools but taught the boys essentially nothing, so that Flory’s latent talents received no encouragement. At 20, he came to Burma to work for a timber firm and began a “lonely, eventless, corrupting” life there. At 24, he dodged military service in the war because he had been “corrupted” by indulging in alcohol, servants, and native girls and didn’t want to do anything hard—yet slowly, he matured through reading and thinking and began to hate his lonely life.
Flory was bullied for his birthmark in school until he successfully conformed to a boyish code that prioritized lying, bullying, and sports. This revelation suggests that Flory’s birthmark symbolizes his latent alienation from British culture. His “trouble”—his cowardice in failing to defend his friend Dr. Veraswami, for example—comes from his desire to hide his nonconformity, represented by his birthmark, and fit in with a hierarchical and hypocritical culture. Interestingly, Flory wants to fit in despite perceiving British culture in Burma as “corrupting” and himself as “corrupted” by it, including by its casual acceptance of white men’s sexual exploitation of Burmese girls.
Themes
Flory, having realized that the British Empire rests on “despotism with theft as its final object,” hates it—and he hates the other British people in Burma, too. Though they may lead unpleasant lives, they are often incompetent and stupid. Their society requires intense self-censorship to avoid admitting that in the Empire, “every white man is a cog in the wheels of despotism.” This secrecy and self-censorship poisons Flory’s life—the more so because he resents primarily the self-censorship and not the racist despotism itself. Yet Flory lives this way, in “books and secret thoughts.” Even when he talks to Veraswami, he’s often really talking to himself, as Veraswami often fails to understand him.
Flory’s belief that the British Empire constitutes “despotism with theft as its final object” again underscores the novel’s claim that British imperialism is an oppressive, exploitative system of government whose purpose (“final object”) is the economic exploitation of (“theft” from) non-white colonized subjects. Because the British cannot admit this ugly fact to themselves, they engage in self-censorship, destroying freedom of speech and isolating Flory in “books and secret thoughts.” Thus, the novel suggests that Flory’s interpersonal loneliness finally derives from the unjust political system in which he lives. Finally, Flory’s belief that Veraswami doesn’t really understand him may suggest that Veraswami’s internalized racism and acceptance of British rule inhibits his comprehension of Flory’s moral crisis as a white British man who has realized the hollowness of white-supremacist and British imperial ideologies.
Themes
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Flory hasn’t returned to England since coming to Burma. At about 30 he sailed for England, hoping that perhaps he could find a “civilised girl” to marry and retire with in England after 10 or 15 more years in Burma. Yet at one of his ship’s ports, his timber company recalled him to Burma because several of his coworkers had taken ill and died of fever and the company needed all their men at work. When Flory returned to Burma, he abruptly realized that, having lived there so long, he now considered it home. He never tried to return to England again—his father died, and he lost touch with his mother and sisters.
Despite Flory’s criticism of British exploitation of non-white colonized peoples, he still thinks of English women as “civilised”—in implicit contrast with non-white Burmese women, whom he presumably considers less civilized. This detail shows Flory’s anti-racist ideals at war with his subconscious racist attitudes.
Themes
Flory has realized that he can’t cure his loneliness by returning to England; instead, he needs someone who can live with him in Burma and understand him there—but not someone like Mrs. Lackersteen, who terrorizes servants and refuses to learn any foreign language. Still walking around his garden, he wonders whether his problem is just that he’s an overthinker who has sabotaged himself. At last he shoots at the barking dog, but he misses and hits a tree. The dog runs down the road a bit, turns around, and keeps barking at the house.
Flory, having accepted Burma as his home, sees himself as unavoidably embedded in British Burmese culture: even if he returns to England, he can’t cure his loneliness because people who have never left England won’t understand his experiences or his moral crisis related to British imperialism. Instead, he wants a companion who has both experienced British imperialism and shares his anti-imperial perspective, not someone like Mrs. Lackersteen who enforces cultural and racial hierarchies by refusing to learn local languages and bullying her non-white servants. This scene thus suggests that Flory will start looking for a companion who fits these criteria—whether he will find such a person in Kyauktada remains to be seen.
Themes
