Misrepresentation of “Others” in Orwell’s Burmese Days

Abstract

Colonial discourses have created various images to represent the Eastern countries and people as the others. It establishes a created form of reality in the readers' mind. It functions as a power to dominate, educate and govern over the non-western countries. Behind every misrepresentation, there lies the motive of colonization and dominate the Orient. Colonial discourses have functioned as power to create hierarchy of race and color that assist the colonizers to centralize them and inferiorize others, which provides an approach to project Westerners' stereotypes of others. George Orwell's Burmese Days textualizes the misrepresentation of Burma and Burmese people. Orwell has partially expressed his love-hate attitudes towards the Burmese people and the white imperialists through his characters. In this sense, the novel shows how Orwell detested imperialism and the native people as well. It also reveals his colonial mentality; i.e. how he shares the sense of superiority as the white race. Beside this, he presents the white characters as superior beings and the Burmese characters as helpless and worthless inferior beings. So through these misrepresentations of Burmese people, Orwell tries to justify the mission of colonization as the mission of civilization.