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George Orwell • George Orwell (1903-1950), pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, was a famous modern British novelist, essayist, social critic and political commentator. He was ranked one of the two best-achieved satirists in English literature, sharing the laureateship with Jonathan Swift, and as one of the three foremost masters of political writing in 20th century, together with Adlous Huxley and Eugene Zamyatin.
Orwell was born in India, where his father was a junior official. He returned with his mother to Britain in 1905 and grew up there. • His childhood was a sad one. Prejudice and social distinction constantly haunted him and left a permanent dark impression in his mind. This childhood trauma nurtured his antipathy towards hierarchy and authoritarianism, which would become a major political subject in his writings later.
In London Orwell lived together with the poor and sympathized with them, and he wrote about them in some of his books. • When serving with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he witnessed the imperialists’ viciousness and the natives’ misery, which became themes of some other books of his.
In 1936, he, as a socialist, fought in the Spanish Civil War against Fascism and totalitarianism. • In Spain he witnessed the ruthless extermination of liberty by the Fascists and realized the danger of the control of thought through language. • He left Spain with a complex understanding of power politics and totalitarianism.
The Spanish experience was the most important influence in shaping his political writing. • As he declared in 1947, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.”
The outbreak of World War II intensified Orwell’s concerns over humanity. He found that human liberty was being threatened.
As a writer of artistic enthusiasm and political integrity, Orwell was outraged by all social injustices and evils. • Throughout his life, Orwell has searched for a voice for his strong sympathy for human goodness and for his hate against all forms of social evils.
In his writing, he successfully fused his artistic and political purposes into one whole. As he once noted, “What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art.” • During his short life of 47 years, he contributed abundant essays, journalistic reports, short stories and novels through his heart and pen, in all of which he exposed totalitarianism and social evils.
His masterpieces are his last two novels, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1948). • 1984 satirizes totalitarianism by setting the story in London which is ruled by “Big Brother”, and Animal Farm is political literature in the disguise of a beast fable.
Both of them express his major concerns: totalitarianism, the corruption of power, and the demise of human nature. • The two books won him international fame as a writer and a fighter against social evils.
In addition, he tried to salvage English from corruption. • He was known for his simple but vigorous language and style. • When he died in 1950, he was eulogized as a “saint” as the “conscience of his generation”.
