This essay examines themes of colonial identity, racial inequality, and cultural displacement as portrayed in two short stories: Liam O'Flaherty's "Going into Exile" and Jean Rhys's "The Day They Burnt the Books." Drawing on an anthology of colonial and postcolonial short fiction, the paper explores how both narratives illustrate the dual identities forced upon colonized peoples, the racial hierarchies embedded in colonial societies, and the ambiguous position of colonial-born members of the colonizing nation. Through close reading of key passages, the essay argues that both stories reveal a universal truth about the psychological and social costs of colonialism.
The paper demonstrates comparative close reading: it moves between two distinct literary texts, identifying shared thematic concerns (dual identity, racial hierarchy, displacement) while respecting each story's specific cultural and historical setting. This technique allows the writer to build a broader argument about colonial literature as a genre without overgeneralizing from a single example.
The essay opens with historical context about colonialism, then introduces its two primary texts. Subsequent body paragraphs alternate between the two stories, analyzing identity, racial differentiation, power dynamics, and the ambiguous position of colonial-born colonizers. The conclusion synthesizes findings into a universal claim about the psychological costs of colonialism. The Works Cited section follows MLA format.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, much of the world was divided and compartmentalized. Empire nations colonized lands all over the world, creating cultures based upon differentiation and racial inequality. In a colonized nation, the population would be comprised of the colonizers — who held ethnic and racial power — and the colonized, who were considered ethnically inferior. In the short stories "Going into Exile" by Liam O'Flaherty and "The Day They Burnt the Books" by Jean Rhys, both authors relate brief narratives that reflect the racial prejudices and conflicts bubbling beneath, and often above, the surface of colonized countries.
In colonial literature, one of the dilemmas that arises most often is the question of identity. People who are colonized are forced to construct a dual identity: on one hand they retain their innate cultures, but on the other they are encouraged — and often forced — to identify with the culture of the colonizers. This tension appears in O'Flaherty's story "Going into Exile." In the story, a young man named Michael is compelled to leave his home in Ireland for the United States, where he believes he will be able to better support himself and help care for his family. To do so, he must turn his back on his own culture in order to embrace, and be embraced by, an American identity.
The father makes this idea clear when he says, "It's your own, the land, and over there…you'll be giving your sweat to some other man's land, or what's equal to it" (O'Flaherty). Although the young man feels some sadness at leaving his father, he does not yet comprehend the deeper meaning behind his departure. To the father, there are two distinct groups — the Irish and the Americans — and Michael's leaving is a form of treachery. This theme of postcolonial displacement resonates throughout both stories examined in this essay.
This idea of ethnic differentiation is repeated in the second story. In "The Day They Burnt the Books," Rhys opens by describing a character named Mr. Sawyer — a white man married to a native Caribbean woman whom he mistreats. What strikes the narrator, however, is not merely the mistreatment but the very fact of this interracial marriage within a colonial society. As the narrator observes, "They [the island population] never decided why he had chosen to settle in a place he didn't like and to marry a coloured woman" (Rhys). The author tempers this statement with a compliment toward the woman, yet the racial inequalities structuring the society remain unmistakably apparent. Jean Rhys, herself a Dominican-born writer of European descent, drew on her own experience of colonial ambiguity to shape such narratives.
Although the two stories were written in two different time periods and represent different countries and different peoples, there is a universality beneath their plots which reveals the truth of what it was like to live in a colonial country. For colonized peoples, a genuine sense of autonomy or cultural pride was never fully attainable, because they were forced to divide their loyalties between two factions. For those born into the colonizing nation in the colonies, they too were ostracized from the mother country and regarded as something other — though not quite as "other" as the colonized themselves.
It was a system that was inherently racist and prejudicial, one that encouraged people to behave in ways that reflected and reinforced its own imbalances. Both O'Flaherty and Rhys capture these dynamics with economy and precision, making their short stories enduring documents of the colonial experience.
O'Flaherty, Liam. "Going into Exile." Ed. Baldwin, Dean R., and Patrick J. Quinn. An Anthology of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 283–291. Print.
Rhys, Jean. "The Day They Burnt the Books." Ed. Baldwin, Dean R., and Patrick J. Quinn. An Anthology of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 452–457. Print.
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