Postcolonial Writings of George Orwell and Derek Walcott

Postcolonial Writings of George Orwell and Derek Walcott

Postcolonial Literature • Literature by or about formerly colonized populations • Examines the complex legacy of imperialism • Gives a voice to indigenous people disenfranchised and marginalized by imperial power

Orwell Biographical Overview • Born Eric Blair in India (1903) but educated in England • 1922—returned to India to join Imperial Police of Burma

Biographical Overview • Imperialist experience made him recognize the abuses of British imperialism • 1927—returned to Europe determined to resist despotism • Worked to alleviate conditions of poor and resist fascism – Lived as street tramp – Fought in Spanish Civil War (1937) – Broadcast for the BBC in World War II

Biographical Overview • Satirized Stalin’s communist regime in Animal Farm • Warned against a totalitarian future (“Big Brother”) for Britain in 1984 • Died of tuberculosis in 1950

Orwell Central Artistic Concepts • Brutally honest political satire against totalitarianism • Contempt for political ideologies and recognition of their potential for oppression • Recognized language’s power as a tool of oppression

“Shooting An Elephant” p. 2457 • Critiques imperialism from the imperialist’s perspective • Reveals “the real motives for which despotic governments act” (p. 2458) • Colonizers as well as colonized people become victims of imperial policy (p. 2459 -60) • Shooting the elephant becomes a metaphor for colonial violence

Walcott Biographical Overview • Born on Caribbean island St. Lucia, part of British West Indies (gained independence in 1979) • Product of Caribbean’s hybrid culture— French, British, Indian, African • Mixed ethnic background—descended from both white colonialists and African slaves • Won Nobel Prize for Literature (1992)

Walcott Central Artistic Concepts • Cultural schizophrenia and psychic fragmentation • Search for identity in a fragmented postcolonial/postmodern culture • Struggle to reconcile European and Caribbean cultures

“A Far Cry from Africa” p. 2580 • Imagery suggests horror at the violence of both imperialists and colonized people (stanzas 1 & 2) • Colonialism inspires a legacy of violence • Ambivalent response to his divided heritage as a colonial subject (lines 2533)