ORWELL 1903-1950 (died when he was only 47, for tubercolosis)
Born Eric Blair in India, son of a colonial official. Taken to England by the mother. But he couldn’t
stand English public school atmosphere (Eton): too strict discipline and moral code, humiliating
punishments). There he professed atheism.
1922-27: served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Then, back to Europe, lived among the
poor working people and tramps in Paris and London. Wrote Down and out in Paris and London.
1937: went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. He had gone there to
report on it but then joined the POUM (anti-stalinist party). Wrote Homage to Catalonia.
1941: moved to London and joined the BBC and worked as a journalist. He was also a book
reviewer and a critic.
1945: Animal Farm, anti-utopian novel in the form of an animal fable in which he satirized the
degeneration of Stalinist Russia.
Independent-minded personality, who believed in socialism, brotherhood, equality. He wished to
“escape from every form of man’s dominion on man”.
Inside himself there was an unresolved conflict between his middle-class background and
education and his emotional identification with the working class.
He thought writing interpreted reality and therefore served a useful social function. He valued
social purpose and content over form. As other writers of the 30s he chose social and political
themes and used realistic and factual language. He had left-wing sympathies.
He wrote devastating criticism of any form of totalitarianism.
NINETEEN-EIGHTY-FOUR
This anti-utopian (or dystopian) novel is set in a grotesque, squalid and resigned London.
(dystopia: an imaginary world which turns out to be a nightmare).
It’s a frightening picture of the future under the constant control of terrible Big Brother.
Free thought, love, sex, feelings, any expression of individuality are forbidden. The overwhelming
impression is a sense of loss, a sense that beauty and truth and all the finest values belong to the
past. There is loss of innocence for children, who are taught to spy on their parents. The Party has
total control of the press and communication. Any rebellion against the rules is punished with
prison and torture.
Winston Smith (Winston evokes Churchill’s great values; Smith is the most common English
surname, so it becomes symbolic) is the last man to believe in humane values in a totalitarian
society, ‘the last liberal’. He tries to write a diary to preserve his private memory; he has a desire
for spiritual and moral integrity. But he experiences alienation. He’s guilty of using critical
intelligence (thought-crime) and will be defeated and crushed by the Power, he will be reduced to
an automaton for whom two and two is five.
Both this novel and Huxley’s Brave New World are dystopias. Both are concerned with how the
individual’s ideas, feelings and imagination are threatened by modern society. But: Huxley dealt
with the dangers of scientific progress; Orwell with the dangers connected with uncontrolled
political power.