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Chapter 9
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
Ten days after meeting Elizabeth, Flory still feels he doesn’t know her well. Though he was supposed to go to the jungle to oversee affairs for his timber firm, he stays in town to spend more time with her. They play tennis together every day, play cards, and talk about trivialities very easily—yet he’s constantly aware of his birthmark and never able to talk as seriously as his deep loneliness compels him to do. Elizabeth seems to avoid all serious topics instinctively—and, Flory has learned, she has awful taste in books. Yet he tells himself that she’s just young—and besides, she’s lived in Paris! She can still provide “the companionship he need[s].” Unbeknownst to Flory, he annoys Elizabeth when he speaks so lovingly of Burma and its people, whom she views contemptuously as “inferior people with black faces.”
The novel links Flory’s inability to discuss important topics with Elizabeth to his self-consciousness about his birthmark, a connection underscoring that the birthmark symbolizes Flory’s social alienation. In this passage, Flory is coming to realize that his first idealized impression of Elizabeth is false: she is less well read and less serious than he had hoped. Yet he doesn’t revise his expectations of her; instead, he insists to himself that she will give him “the companionship he need[s]”—an insistence revealing that he is less genuinely interested in Elizabeth as an individual than he is in assuaging his desperate loneliness, a task that he assumes some woman ought to do for him. Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s secret annoyance that Flory praises the Burmese, whom she thinks of as “inferior people with black faces,” foreshadows that Elizabeth’s racism and the larger imperialist culture it represents will continue to cause interpersonal problems for Flory.
Themes
One day, Elizabeth exits the club and finds Flory talking to two Eurasian men, Mr. Francis and Mr. Samuel. Francis, who loves talking to Europeans, is hurriedly telling Flory his life story. When Elizabeth approaches, Francis greets her effusively, which she—not knowing “who or what” he is—finds disagreeable. She turns and heads for the tennis courts without responding. Flory says goodbye to Francis and Samuel and follows her.
That Francis loves talking to Europeans suggests that he sees proximity to whiteness as a source of social status and self-worth. Elizabeth has an immediate negative reaction to Francis, a biracial man, because she doesn’t know “who or what” he is. Her reaction reinforces her narrow-mindedness and racism.
Themes
When Elizabeth asks who Francis and Samuel were, Flory explains that they are Eurasians—children of white men and native women—forced into poverty because they aren’t accepted into white society but refuse to take “native” jobs and surrender the prestige of partial whiteness. When Elizabeth, who dislikes Flory’s “sneaking sympathy” for the Eurasians, suggests that they are “degenerate types,” Flory says that the European men are responsible for their existence. Elizabeth retorts that Flory isn’t responsible—only a bad European man would consort with a native woman. Guiltily, Flory thinks of a Eurasian girl he seduced and abandoned back in 1913.
Francis and Samuel refuse to take “native” jobs because, as biracial men with one white parent, they are higher status racially than the native Burmese even if lower status economically. Their behavior illustrates the importance that, in the novel’s view, people of all races accord to gaining and maintaining social status—racism and racial hierarchies being one way that people create and maintain status hierarchies. When Elizabeth claims that only a bad white man would have sex with a non-white woman, it reveals her racism—and may foreshadow future conflict between Elizabeth and Flory if she discovers any of his prior liaisons with non-white women.
Themes
Elizabeth asks whether anyone socializes with the Eurasians. Flory admits that no “pukka sahib” would talk to them, but when he’s feeling courageous, he tries not to be a “pukka sahib.” Elizabeth, who by now knows what that phrase means, strongly dislikes that remark. Yet she still retains some of her first good impression of him—she barely notices his birthmark—and is excited to go hunting with him, as he has promised to take her.
In British India and Burma, “pukka sahib”—taken from a Hindi phrase that roughly translates to “real master”—became an English slang term meaning “true gentlemen” or “great fellow,” especially one who holds himself apart from and above colonized subjects. For Flory, the “pukka sahib” ideology is an outgrowth of the British Empire’s hypocrisy and racism—but for Elizabeth, being a “pukka sahib” is a good thing, and this shows the stark difference in the two characters’ political and racial ideologies. Despite this difference, Elizabeth still barely notices Flory’s birthmark. Since the birthmark has heretofore symbolized Flory’s social alienation, Elizabeth’s inattention to it suggests that she has yet to realize how different Flory truly is from the other, more conservative British people in Kyauktada.
Themes
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