Native Peoples‘ Response to Colonial Domination in Orwell‘s Burmese Days and Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart

Abstract

This dissertation explores how George Orwell‘s Burmese Days and Chinua Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart respond to colonial oppression through the lens of Antonio Gramsci‘s notion of hegemony. The Britishers treat the Burmese as uncivilized, savage, and backward, thereby dehumanizing them. However, this raises an important question: why do the Burmese people regard the British as superior, intelligent, and civilized and why do they not resist them? As Gramsci argues, power is not maintained solely through force but also through the consent of those who are subjugated; this notion provides a critical framework for understanding the dynamics of empire in both novels. In Burmese Days, characters such as U Po Kyin demonstrate how indigenous elites reproduce colonial ideology for personal advancement, while Dr.Veraswami‘s loyalty to British rule reveals internalized subordination. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe illustrates how native authority is undermined from within by depicting the deterioration of Igbo customs as a result of the simultaneous pressures of Christian missionaries and colonial administration. Okonkwo‘s tragic resistance highlights the futility of opposing a system that demands both physical force and intellectual obedience, while Nwoye‘s conversion represents the production of colonial consent. This dissertation reveals that colonial hegemony functioned by disintegrating traditional social relationships, co-opting local intermediaries, and normalizing foreign values. Finally, the dissertation examines the fragmentation of indigenous resistance, the failure of communities to resist colonial domination effectively, indigenous complicity, and the destructive impact of colonial rule on native cultures. It provides a comparative study of the two novels and demonstrates how colonial systems relied on local collaboration. Keywords: colonial oppression, counter-hegemony, indigenous response