Postcolonial Reading of George Packer's Betrayed

Abstract

George Packer's play Betrayed (2008) is considered as an anti-war play which depicts the betrayal of the Americans for the Iraqis who collaborate with its forces especially the translators. A Post-colonial reading of the play also shows the recurrent image of the Oriental man in the Western literature ( of course here the Iraqi people who are depicted as either naïve, simple, and stupid or extremists, fundamentalists or terrorists). The study also shows the contradictions in the text. the play is , on the one hand, a propaganda and a justification of the war and on the other hand it reveals the false claims of the Americans of liberating the country and reconstructing it making it a democratic country.