Crossing boundaries

The “purity of the community… the essence of the community [as] an intangible “moral attitude”, a multiplicity of invisible lines” (Stoler 516) that cannot be crossed is seen in Flory, May and Dr Veraswami. Flory crosses the racial lines of imperialism by befriending and aligning his sympathies with the colonized. However, with Elizabeth’s arrival, the invisible lines that divide colonizers and colonized are unveiled as he realizes that he “longed all these years for somebody to talk to!” His acute loneliness stems from straddling between his colonist lineage and disapproved friendships with the locals. In May and Dr. Veraswami, there is a reversal of racism as they believe the colonists as superior to their own race and actively seeks to cross into the domains of the colonists’ community. May thought that becoming the wife of a white man would give her prestige and earn respect while Dr Veraswami believed his own race as inferior to the colonists.

Both Colonizers and colonized are trapped within the nets of imperialism. Dr. Veraswami and May can never cross into the other community while Flory can never assimilate into the Burmese because of the burden of his colonist status:

But we can't help it… a demon inside us driving us to talk. We walk about under a load of memories which we long to share and somehow never can. It's the price we pay for coming to this country.

The disgrace and fear of contamination of the white race by metissage cost Flory his life. Most of all, all who transgressed from and into the boundaries of ‘pure communities’ suffer humiliation, poverty and death while those who remained within their side of the picket fences (Elizabeth, Macgregor, Ellis etc) continue to perpetuate racial demarcation. In the end, both colonizers and colonized cannot escape their ‘birthmarks’.

It was not what he had done that horrified her…It was, finally, the birthmark that had damned him.