1.
Biography
Eric Blair, alias George Orwell, was born in India in 1903; he was the
son of a minor colonial official. He was educated at St. Cyprian’s in
Eastbourne then at Eton.
He developed an independent-minded personality and professed
atheism and socialism. In 1927 he went on leave and decided not to
return.
After he returned to London and started a social experiment: wearing
second-hand clothes, he spent short periods living in lodging-houses in
the East End. In this way he experienced poverty and learned how
institutions for the poor.
After a period in Paris where he worked as a dishwasher in a hotel, he
decided to begin publishing his works with the pseudonym of George
Orwell.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) was his first non-fiction
narrative where he described his experience among the poor. In 1936
he married Eilee O’Shaughnessy and in the same year Orwell was
commissioned by a left-wing publisher to investigate conditions
among the miners, factory workers and unemployed in the industrial
North. He published a report in 1937: ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’.
In 1936 Orwell went to Catalonia with his wife to report on the
Spanish Civil War. In 1938 he recalled this experience in ‘Homage to
Catalonia’. George suffered from bronchitis and pneumonia and
Eileen died during an operation in 1945.
During the Second World War, Orwell moved to London and in 1941
he joined the BBC. In 1943 he resigned and became literary editor of
‘Tribune’ a socialist weekly. He also began writing ‘Animal
Farm’(published in 1945) and his last book was ‘Nineteen Eighty-
Four’ (published in 1949).
Orwell died of tuberculosis the following year.
The Artist’s development
Orwell’s various experiences abroad contributed to his unusual ability
to see his country from the outside and to judge its strengths and
weaknesses.
Closely linked to this quality, was the fact that he chose to reject his
background and to establish a separate identity of his own.
Orwell’s life and work were marked by the unresolved conflict
between his middle-class background and education and his emotional
identification with the working class.
In his essay ‘Inside the Whale’ (1940), Orwell tried to define the role
of the writer considering the literature of the 1920s and 1930s.
Orwell believed that the writer should be independent and that no
good writing could come of following a party line.
Social Themes
Orwell was a prolific book-reviewer, critic, politician, journalist and
pamphleteer.
He conveyed a vision of human fraternity and of the misery caused by
poverty and deprivation. He critiqued totalitarianism warning against
the violation of liberty and helping his readers to recognise tyranny in
all its forms.
2. Animal Farm (1945)
Animal Farm expresses his disillusionment with Stalinism and
totalitarianism in the form of an animal fable.
The book is a short narrative set on a farm where a group of
oppressed animals, capable of speech and reason and inspired by the
teachings of an old boar, overcome their cruel master and set up a
revolutionary government.
At first the animals’ life is guided by Seven Commandments based on
equality, these are altered by the pigs who become dictatorial and
arrogate the privileges exercised by humans.
The parallels between the plot of the book and the history of the URSS
between 1917 and 1943 are clear: each animal symbolizes a
representative type.
Orwell wanted to write a satire on dictatorship.
The tone of the book blends humor and sarcasm with horrifying
scenes and a painful atmosphere. The main theme is that all
revolutions fail to achieve the expectations of their promoters and the
ideals that inspired them are diluted by the ruling elite which
concentrates power into its own hands.
3. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
The novel describes a future England as a vast totalitarian system
including North America, South Africa and Australia. The country is
ruled by the party which is led by a figure called Big Brother.
The work is divided into 3 parts:
1. main character, Winston Smith lives a oppressive world;
2. love for Julia and the temporary happiness;
3. Winston’s imprisonment and torture by the Thought Police and
loss of his intellectual integrity.
Winston Smith is the last man to believe in humane values in a
totalitarian age. Winston evokes Churchill’s patriotic appeals for blood,
sweat and tears.
He experiences alienation from society and he works at the Ministry of
Truth.
He writes on the creamy paper of an old diary to maintain sanity in a
disorienting world.
An anti-utopian novel
Orwell combined various genres and styles in an original way,
blending documentary realism and an acute eye for detail with parody
and satire. Nineteen Eighty-Four is an anti-utopian novel.
Orwell presents a frightening picture of the future as being under the
constant control of Big Brother. There’s no privacy because there are
monitors watching every step people take. Love is forbidden but there
is the Two Minutes Hate.
The party has control of the press, communication and propaganda.
Any form of rebellion against the rules is punished with prison, torture
and liquidation.
The novel reveals the author’s acute sense of history and his
sympathy with the millions of people persecuted and murdered in the
name of the totaliatarian ideologies of 20th century.