The blinded schoolboy
One of a group of schoolboys who jeer at Ellis in the road. He answers a question with three words, and Ellis lashes his cane across the boy's eyes. He recoils screaming that he is blinded, and a Burmese doctor's poultice, applied afterwards, finishes the job. His injury is what brings the crowd to the Club, and the Europeans close ranks around Ellis rather than give him up.
The book
At a glance
- The schoolboy Ellis blinds in the street
- Three: "Not your business"
- A cane across both eyes, completed by a Burmese doctor's poultice on the left eye
- Never given
- Chapter 22
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeIn chapter 22 five High School boys walk down the road in Kyauktada abreast and grin at Ellis, an English timber company manager and the most violently racist of the Europeans in the novel. Orwell says plainly that they meant to bait him, that they had probably heard a British forest officer had been killed and regarded it as a victory, and that they knew the law protected them as long as they did nothing.
Ellis stops and demands to know what they are laughing at, twice. One of the boys answers, three words: not your business. Orwell adds that the boy's poor English may have made the answer sound ruder than he meant it to.
Ellis hits him across the eyes with his cane, with all his strength. The boy falls on his knees with his arms over his face, screaming that he is blinded. His four friends jump on Ellis, are beaten off, and pelt him with lumps of road-mending stone until police from the station come up the road and they run.
The rest of it happens away from the boy. Ellis writes to the Deputy Commissioner claiming an unprovoked assault, and two clerks and an office messenger who saw the whole thing corroborate him word for word. The police are sent to find the four boys, who stay hidden all day. That evening the injured boy is taken to a Burmese doctor, who puts a poultice of crushed leaves on his left eye and finishes the blinding.
The next day two thousand people surround the European Club and ask for one thing. Their spokesman is polite about it: they have no quarrel with the rest, the boy Ellis struck has gone blind, and they want Ellis handed over, because they know there is no justice for them in the British courts. The Europeans do not hand him over.
How the book draws them
- Who he isA pupil at the Government High School in Kyauktada, one of five boys walking home together. Orwell says schoolboys in Burma at that date were nationalists as a matter of course. He is never named and never described beyond his age group.
- What he didGrinned at an Englishman in the street, and when the Englishman demanded to know what he was laughing at, said that it was not his business.
- The caneEllis swung with his full strength and the stick landed across the boy's eyes. Orwell writes that for about a second Ellis did not know what he was doing.
- What he says nextKneeling in the road with his arms across his face, screaming that he is blinded, while his friends fight and then run for a pile of stones to throw.
- The poulticeThat evening he is taken to a Burmese doctor who applies a poisonous mixture of crushed leaves to the injured left eye. Orwell states the result in half a sentence: it succeeded in blinding him.
- The version that goes on the recordEllis reports that he was attacked without provocation. Two clerks and a messenger who watched it happen back him up in perfect unison, and Orwell adds that Ellis himself probably believed it.
- What his blinding causesA crowd of about two thousand surrounds the Club the following afternoon asking for Ellis to be sent out to them. It is the largest thing that happens in the novel, and it is settled by rifle volleys fired over the crowd's heads.