Orwell Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Orwell - Essay Example ger of a lumber company in Burma, is stationed along with a dozen or so British citizens in Kyauktada, a small village which one of the British refers to as â€Å"a filthy hole.†(184) The social center for these minor government officials and company managers stationed in the â€Å"bloody, bloody hole† (18) is the Club whose policy is Whites Only, for it is whites who administer government in this outpost of imperialistic British rule of the subcontinent. The amount of liquor consumed in the Club by its male members, most of them infantile and cynical, is staggering. When the British Commissioner suggests the Club elect one non-white to membership, most of the Englishmen are enraged. But the news has filtered into the native community where two men, U Po Kyin and Dr. Veraswami, wish to be honored by joining. U Po Kyin is a Subdivisional Magistrate of Kyauktada who prospers by graft and plotting, while the doctor respects everything British; his ardor for Englishmen impels him to call them â€Å"torchbearers upon the path of progress.†(42) But the grossly obese U Po Kyin sees the doctor as an enemy and methodically destroys his reputation. Flory is the doctor’s friend and is criticized for being so by racist members of the Club. He is also, consequently, a ‘mark’ for U Po Kyin and, like the doctor, is ultimately so disgraced (as well as disconsolate over Elizabeth Lackertseen’s rejection) that he commits suicide. â€Å"Absolute power corrupts, but absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.† This observation, made by once Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, encapsulates what most often occurs when Third World countries are conquered and then ruled by more ‘advanced’ countries. Ugandan President and criminal, Idi Amin, for example, has been thought by many to be merely aping, though perhaps without their subtlety, what he’d learned from the British during their occupation of his country. This is apparent in Orwell’s depiction of the British in