George Orwell
Pre-reading
George Orwell (1903-1950) was the pen name used by British author and journalist Eric Arthur Blair. During most of his professional life time Orwell was best known for his journalism, both in the British press and in books such as Homage to Catalonia, describing his activities during the Spanish Civil War, and Down and Out in Paris and London, describing a period of poverty in these cities. Orwell is best remembered today for two of his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. He wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier, documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England, are widely acclaimed, as are his essays on politics, literature, language, and culture.
When the Spanish civil war broke out in 1936, Orwell wanted to fight for the Spanish government against Francisco Franco’s Nationalist uprising. In Aragon, he was shot in the throat by “a Fascist sniper”. In Barcelona he joined the anti-Stalinist Spanish Trotskyists’Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification. When the communists partly gained control and tried to purge the party, many of Orwell’s friends were arrested, shot, or disappeared. He barely escaped alive in 1937.
His influence still works on popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian —descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices — has entered the language together with many of his neologisms, for instance, cold war, Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, memory hole, doublethink, etc.
Prompts for Your Reading
1.Why does Orwell say “Believe nothing, or next to nothing, of what you read about internal affairs on the Government side”?
2.Who are the two sides of the Spanish Civil War?
3.What is the excuse of the Nazis for supporting Franco?