Burmese Days Essay #5 Assignment for 29047 --
At first sight, James Flory seems to embody British rule. He is white, male and middle class. As a representative of an imperial race, this combination of characteristics explained and indeed justified British rule throughout the world. However, Flory is unlike the other representatives of the BritishEmpire who appear in Burmese Days. He is not comfortable with hisprivileged status as it relates to any of these categories: race, gender, class. He has mixed feelings about maintaining the boundaries that imperial British society teaches him about all these categories.Orwell's representation of Flory's life and death may also reveal many of the internal contradictions of the British empire in the early twentieth century.
The following assignment asks you to explore causal arguments that focus on the significance of a particular factor -- the way people in the story make, keep, value, or break gender boundaries. This is a factor that could be considered essential to understanding why Orwell's colonial protagonist self-destructs at the end of the story.
Be sure you understand the term “gender”, defined by Prof. Haynes in lecture today as "socially prescribed roles for men and women, based on purported biological difference." (Different societies may interpret biological difference in various ways.) When we say a society "prescribes" roles, we mean that it defines them in a way that places demands on the members of the society to maintain and enforce these roles. It may also impose penalties, sanctions, shame or guilt for transgressing or breaking them.
Remember that you are reading a fictional text in which techniques of narration, plot, imagery, and linguistic choice are employed by the author to support both literary themes and political and economic arguments about colonialism.
You will be expected to 1) identify causal claims; 2) articulate a thesis that features a causal argument; 3) defend your causal explanation; and 4) anticipate objections from those who are persuaded by other possible causal explanations.
Causal arguments examine narrative processes by asking questions.Just as historians and other scholars in the humanities have particular interests that influence the subjects they choose to study or the way they rank causes or evaluate evidence, this essay offers an opportunity to develop your own interests. At the technical level, good causal arguments recognize that it is possible to confuse a coincidental conjunction with a true cause and effect relationship, that there is a difference between a "necessary" cause and a "sufficient" cause, that events often have multiple causes, and that events often have less apparent causes.Good causal arguments also consciously avoid incomplete arguments or logical fallacies.It is not necessary to relate your argument to whether or not you believe that there is ever a sufficient cause for suicide in real life.
Read "Active Reading and Textual Explication" (99-106), "Integrating Quotations Logically" (107-110), "Integrating Quotations Stylistically," "Causal Logic" (115-120), and "Causal Arguments" (121-124) in the Writer's Handbook before beginning.You will be using close reading skills that you have already used in previous essays.
Your essay should be 4-6 pages and will count for 30% of your writing grade.Plan on writing more than you need and cutting at least one page in the course of writing this assignment.
Sample topics that your section leader may choose as causal factors
The maintenance of gender boundaries
The crossing of gender boundaries
Specific causal agents and events in Flory's life could include
Flory's failed romance with Elizabeth
Flory's doomed friendship with Dr. Veraswami
Flory's complicated sexual history with Ma Hla May
Flory's early education
Flory's initial "corruption" by the East (67)
Events that "test" Flory's masculinity in which he succeeds (shooting the leopard, intervening in the riot, etc.)
Events that "test" Flory's masculinity in which he fails (being rattled by the earthquake, falling off Verrall's horse, etc.)
A successful essay will do the following: Demonstrate that you understand the complexities of a causal argument about colonialism by explaining the causal factors chosen by your section leader.
Demonstrate that you have read the primary source on the subject in-depth and more than once.
Acknowledge limitations in the evidence.
Apply principles of causal analysis from the Writer's Handbook.
Keep the reader on track by means of clear signals, clear paragraphing, interesting topic sentences, and relevant evidence in the form of quotations from the text.
Cite all sources properly in MLA citation format.
Use the conventions of Standard Written English
Thinking about Audience . . .
Many readers associate the work of George Orwell with 1984 or Animal Farm and think of him as a writer of political allegory or futuristic fiction.Instead, you will be focusing on a literary work about British colonialism in Burma.You will face the added task of considering Burmese Days both as a work of literature and as a primary source.If Flory had many of the same experiences as author George Orwell did in his time in colonial Burma, how did Orwell escape a similar fate?