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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.

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Postcolonial Writings of George Orwell and Derek Walcott

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  1. Postcolonial Writings ofGeorge Orwelland Derek Walcott

  2. 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

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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. “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

  8. 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)

  9. 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

  10. “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 25-33)

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