Remembering George Orwell: The Writer and his Works
Rare are the writers who make us smile from the depth of our hearts, wrap around us like a blanket on a winter evening and warm us from within like sips of hot coffee passing down our throats, but still rarer are the ones that shake us from the comfort of our happily deluded thought bubbles and stock-still us into a sharp portrait of reality that then becomes hard to be cured of. George Orwell is such a writer. Eric Arthur Blair, born in Bihar of colonial India, was many things before he became George Orwell, the writer as we know him. He was an imperial police officer, the experiences of which are recorded in Burmese Days, a book-keeper, book-reviewer and a critic, a teacher, and a columnist who had experienced first-hand what it was to be a soldier at the Spanish Civil War.
As a writer, there was little about Orwell that was not political. He wrote exhaustively about poverty, social inequality, fascism, totalitarianism, the power of the working class, and the workers’ revolution. Every age has its own icon, and Orwell was no less than an iconic figure in a world where the political atmosphere had taken over the reins from every other aspect and became the sole determiner of the life one was going to have in a changed world.
Orwell was a staunch democratic socialist, and this he had always known. Through his books, he proposed to wage a war against the system that for its thriving, attempts to obliterate the history of its people, making them vulnerable to estrangement from a shared past and consequently, easy victimisation.
Orwell has three works of non-fiction, six of fiction and a vast number of essays accredited to his name, all of them remarkable in their own ways, sparking insight into the nature of men and reflecting his own erudite understanding of the impact of politics on men and women anywhere and everywhere. His accuracy in depicting the horrors of the world, both present and future, makes him the prophetic voice of his time.
The following recommendations are only a handful picked from his vast body of work that not only deserves but needs and demands our elaborate attention.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”
Had history been taught through allegories, every student would have sat upright with fixed eyes and rapt attention in their social science classes. But that was not to be! The above quote is one of the most popular ones from the writer’s list of is a political allegory where all the farm animals, tired of their master, Farmer Jones, decide to come together to overthrow him. However, through a twist, the pigs betray the movement and take over power, and the state of misery continues for the rest. Power comes dangerously close to being synonymous with corruption, and if not so, at least an incredibly potent source of evil. The chapter from history it so evidently portrays is the Russian Revolution of 1917. The dream vision of a utopian world painted in the anthem, “Beasts of England” wherein the animals are free from all forms of oppression, is bound to be reduced to only the realisation of a failed attempt at securing freedom. As the pigs slowly start to bear the appearance, appurtenances and conduct of humans, and eventually become indistinguishable from them, the most quoted lines from the book seem nothing short of utter exhilaration derived from the pertinence with the situation which it planned to call out at first.
Orwell is known for his dexterity in making political writing into an art. With Animal Farm it had already been established. But in it ran riot. There are lines every few pages, that are so perceptive, that would resonate so well with any conscious citizen of the present world, that they are bound to make one pause and think and to want to sink in the pertinent message that Orwell wishes to give to his readers. His purpose has always been more social than creative. The dystopian fiction registers itself in the conscious and the subconscious, for it presents the horrors of totalitarianism in its extreme worst. He warns readers of the subtle beginnings of the rise of a totalitarian government to power and seeks to empower them by extending to them an understanding of their own power as workers. In the novel as in the world outside,
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
With a secret dissident, Winston Smith as its protagonist, Nineteen Eighty-four tells a story of a single man’s plan to raise voice against the very party he is a part of, so as to see in his direct actions an act of rebellion materialised. With him in his motivated act of feeble rebellion is Julia, his lover and fellow member of the party. His cynicism is implicit and detailed, for he iterates and reiterates there being a hope, except it being in the proles- the proletariats, not in men and women like him who are under surveillance at all hours of the day and the night, under restraint of movement and pleasure, under the micro-management of the party’s symbolic head- the Big Brother.
The world building is gripping, the fantastic becomes believably real. In fact, comparisons with Huxley’s Brave New World and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are unavoidable. The book is remarkable for the hope it inspires despite being a dystopia, and that is at the cost of being ironical for such real world implications. Because the party breaks the protagonist and kills his spirit of revolution by dismantling his fundamental system of beliefs and manipulating his mind, which he thought was his own, by employing terror, one need not infer that such will be the fate of all men, especially the workers. Orwell’s hope and that of Winston’s- both lie in the proles, not only because they are vast in number but also because principally the proles, unlike other party members, have retained their humanity. This is one such book I would recommend everyone to read, not only because it is amazing in every way imaginable, but because it is real and has something pivotal to say.
“One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right.”
This work of Orwell is a work of non-fiction that records his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. It contains some remarkable insights into the corrupting nature of power, how neither political extremes of the Left or the Right was to be trusted, and most of all, the power of the workers when they came together as a force of revolution against the totalitarian forces. The Spanish Civil War was a noteworthy episode in Orwell’s life- one that would come to shape his political ideology and bring him face to face with the façade of their left-wing allies in the War, the Communists. It is here he is cleansed of what is called the ‘Soviet Myth’ and begins to refer to Communism as a “counter-revolutionary force.”
“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.”
As Mandela wrote of apartheid in South Africa that in the act of discriminating against the darker race, both the oppressor and the oppressed were without freedom, so notes Orwell in his brilliantly penned essay of a similar state of the imperialist and the colonized who are both trapped in perpetual cycle of captivity. Orwell served temporarily as an Imperial Police officer in Burma, but secretly he liked the Burmese and hated the Imperialist forces he served from the core of his heart. One tries to connect the dots and see a bit of Orwell in Winston Smith from Nineteen Eitghty-four. “Shooting an Elephant” is a simple essay where the imperialist shoots an elephant gone ‘must’ in spite of his better judgement only because he is enslaved by the notion of power which lies in firing his bullet and asserting his authority. He knows that the elephant has recovered and poses no danger to anyone there, however he is encouraged by the local villagers to fire. There is plenty of insight into the notion of power shared by white man as well as the native populace. The elephant who has to lose his life for behaving in a way that is only expected of elephants all over, is transformed into a symbol of all victims of white tyranny of colonizers.
“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd-seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.”
These lines sum up Orwell’s adeptness at handling observation and turning it into words that converse with you long after you’re done reading them. And evidently, it is not the usual warmth or the charm of romance or even ornamentation as in case of other writers, but Orwell’s lucid prose and the mirror it holds up to society, not sparing even himself.
“In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.”
This is yet another remarkable piece of prose found in his collection of essays that recounts Orwell’s experiences as an assistant in a bookshop. He describes his customers comprehensively, combining excellent thought with wit. He also talks about how such a job might suck out all interest one might have in books for the job combines some unpleasant interaction with the nasty dust and the air of aimlessness surrounding the stacks of books, not to mention typical whacked-out Londoners. What stands out is a close look at the perceptions of such a character as a mere assistant at a bookshop, for he is someone we might meet from time to time. One might even feel a little vulnerable the next time one visits a bookshop.
was a revolutionary, in thought and act, in fiction and non-fiction, in life and thanks to his works, even in death. On his anniversary it is imperative to remember the service of this man who etched in our minds that “in a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act” and led by example.
References:
Animal Farm, George Orwell. SparkNotes, 2008.
“George Orwell.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 17 Jan. 2021.
Orwell, George, and Jeremy Paxman. Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays. Penguin Books, 2009.
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Penguin Books, 1989.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Wordsworth Editions, 2021.
“Shooting an Elephant Bookshop Memories Summary: Course Hero.” Shooting an Elephant Bookshop Memories Summary | Course Hero, Course Hero.
- Ipsita Mallick
Originally published at https://www.bookishsanta.com on January 21, 2021.
