George Orwell Biography

source: Pegasos

 

English novelist, essayist and critic, famous for his novels ANIMAL FARM (1945) and NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949), classics of political satire. The book shows that the destruction of language is part of all other oppression. Although Orwell expressed leftist views, he remained to the end of his life an uncompromising individualist and political idealist. Orwell was called by his contemporaries the conscience of his age.

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, than one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals." ( from 'Reflections on Gandhi', in Shooting an Elephant, 1949)

George Orwell was born in Motihari, Bengal, India, as the second child of Richard Walmesley Blair and Ida Mabel Limonzin. His father was a civil servant in the opium department and his mother came from a family of old Burma hands. In 1904 Orwell moved with his mother and sister to England. He attended Eton, where the old-fashioned British flogging was in use. Orwell published his first writings in college periodicals. During these years Orwell developed his antipathy towards the English class systems. Also Orwell's years at St Cyprian's Preparatory School were not happy. His bitter essay dealing with this period, SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS, was not published until 1968.

Orwell failed to win a scholarship to university and in 1922 he went to Burma to serve in the Indian Imperial Police (1922-27) as an assistant superintendent. Like his colleagues, Orwell had native mistresses. Eventually Orwell's mounting dislike of imperialism led to his resignation. His revelations of the behaviour of the colonial officers appeared in SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT (1950) and in his early essay A Hanging (1931).

Orwell returned to Europe and lived as a tramp and beggar, working low paid jobs in England and France (1928-29). He had decided in 1928 to become a writer. He had not shown earlier much inclination for writing and his first amateurish efforts arose smiles. A poet friend described him "like a cow with a musket." Orwell's account of his experiences in poverty gave material for DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON (1933). However, the author was never an authentic vagrant, but often showed strange urge for self-punishment. He also has an aunt in Paris. From 1930 Orwell contributed regularly to the New Adelphi and in 1933 he assumed the pseudonym by which he would sign all his publications. Orwell was he name of a small river in East Anglia, and George was definitely a British Christian name.

Unable to support himself with his writings, Orwell took up a teaching post at a private school, where he finished his first novel, BURMESE DAYS (1934). In 1936 Orwell married Eileen O'Shaugnessy. KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING, the story of a young bookseller's assistant, appeared in 1936. From 1936 to 1940 Orwell worked as a shopkeeper in Wallingford, Hertfordshire. In 1936 Orwell was commissioned by the publisher Victor Gollancz to produce a documentary account of unemployment in the North of England for the Left Book Club. The result, THE ROAD TO WIGAN'S PEER, is considered a milestone in modern literary journalism.

In the1930s Orwell had adopted socialistic views and travelled to Spain to report on the Civil War. He fought alongside the United Workers Marxist Party militia and was shot through the throat by a Francoist sniper’s bullet. When Stalinists on their own side started to hunt down Anarchists and his friends were thrown into prison, Orwell escaped with his Eileen Blair from the chaos. The war made him a strong opposer of communism and an advocate of the English brand of socialism. Orwell's book on Spain, HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, appeared in 1938 after some troubles with its publication. The book was coldly received by left-wing intelligentsia, who considered Communists heroes of the war. In Orwell’s lifetime Homage to Catalonia sold only about fifty copies a year.

During World War II Orwell served as a sergeant in the Home Guard and worked as a journalist for the BBC, Observer and Tribune, where he was literary editor from 1943 to 1945. Toward the end of the war he wrote Animal Farm, which depicted the betrayal of a revolution. After the war Orwell lived mostly in Jura in the Western Isles of Scotland. With Eileen he had adopted a little boy. His wife died in 1945 and in 1949 Orwell married Sonia Brownell, who had been an editorial assistant on Cyril Connolly’s magazine Horizon.

The biting satire of Communist ideology in The Animal Farm made Orwell for the first time prosperous. His other world wide success was Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the classical works of science fiction along with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and H.G. Wells novels Time Machine, War of The World and Invisible Man. 1984 was a bitter protest against the nightmarish direction in which the author believed the modern world was moving. In the story, Britannia has become Airstrip One in the superstate Oceania, which is controlled by Big Brother and the Party. The Party's agents constantly rewrite history. The official language is Newspeak, and the society is dominated by such slogans as "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", "Ignorance is Strength." Goldstein with his book is supposedly plotting against Oceania, and a target of a hate period. The hero, Winston Smith, a minor Party operative, rewrites the past at the Ministry of Truth. He keeps a secret diary and has a brief love affair with a girl named Julia. He believes that O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, is not sympathetic to Big Brother. O'Brien enrolls him and Julia in a conspiracy. One day Winston is arrested by the Thought Police, tortured and brainwashed. O'Brien directs Winston's torture and rehabilitation and tells that Goldstein is the invention of the Party. His spirit broken, Winston learns to love Big Brother. Winston and Julia meet briefly one day, they both have gone through the process and have lost their former love for each other. Some critics have related Smith's sufferings to those the author underwent at preparatory school - Winston is finally broken by rats. Orwell has said that the book was written "to alter other people's idea of the kind of society they should strive after."

Orwell died from tuberculosis in London on January 21, 1950, soon after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1998 Martin Seymour-Smith listed Orwell's dystopia among 100 most influential books ever written. Orwell himself implicitly acknowledged his debt to Evgeny Zamyatin's (1884-1937) novel We (in Russia My), which was written in 1920 and translated into English 1924.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power." (from Nineteen Eighty-Four)

Although Orwell is best-known as a novelist, his essays are among the finest of the 20th-century. He also produced newspaper articles and reviews, which were written for money, but he carefully crafted his other essays for such journals as Partisan Review, Adelphi and Horizon. Orwell united his political views and literary skills into a penetrating analysis of bureaucratic institutions and cultural elite. Without hesitation he accused that Yeats is a fascist, H.G. Wells was out of touch with reality, Salvador Dali he found decadent, but he defended P.G. Wodehouse. In 'Why Write?' and 'Politics and the English Language' (1948) Orwell argued that writers have an obligation of fighting social injustice, oppression, and the power of totalitarian regimes.

For further reading: George Orwell by L. Brander (1954); The Crystal Spirit by G. Woodcock (1966); Orwell by Raymond Williams (1971); The Unknown Orwell by Peter Stansky (1972); Road to Miniluv by C. Small (1975); George Orwell: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Jeffrey Meyers (1975); A Reader's Guide to George Orwell, ed. by Jeffrey Meyers (19757); George Orwell: A Life by B. Crick (1981); A George Orwell Companion by J.R. Hammond (1982); The Language of 1984 by W.F. Bolton (1984); George Orwell, ed. by Courtney T. Wemyss and Alexej Ugrinsky (1987); Orwell by Michel Shelden (1991); Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation by Jeffrey Meyers (2000) OTHER WRITERS WITNESSING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR: Ernest Hemingway, Federico Garcia Lorca, André Malraux, Langston Hughes

Animal Farm (1945) - satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution, particularly directed against Stalin's Russia. Led by the pigs, the Animals on Mr Jones's farm revolt against their human masters. After their victory they decide to run the farm themselves on egalitarian principles. Inspired by the example of Boxer, the hard-working horse, the cooperation prosper. The pigs become corrupted by power and a new tyranny is established under Napoleon (Stalin). 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.' Snowball (Trotsky), an idealist, is driven out. The final betrayal is made when the pigs engineer a rapprochement with Mr Jones. The book was originally rejected for publication in 1944 at Faber and Faber by T.S. Eliot, who wrote: "After all, your pigs are far more intellectual than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm—in fact, there couldn’t have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public spirited pigs." The book has gained since its appearance a status of a classic. - Film adaptation from 1955 was a faithful rendition of Orwell's original work, but watered in the end the satire, and presented a socialist viewpoint: the system is good, but the individuals are corruptible.

Selected works:

• DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON, 1933 - Puilla paljailla Pariisissa ja Lontoossa
• BURMESE DAYS, 1934
• CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER, 1935
• KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING, 1936 - Eläköön tuonenkielo!
• THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER, 1937 - Tie Wiganin aallonmurtajalle
• HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, 1938 - Katalonia, Katalonia
• COMING UP FOR AIR, 1939
• INSIDE THE WHALE AND OTHER ESSAYS, 1940
• THE LION AND THE UNICORN, 1941
• ed.: TALKING TO INDIA, 1943
• ANIMAL FARM, 1945 - Eläinten vallankumous - animated movie 1955, dir. by Joy Batchelor, John Halas
• CRITICAL ESSAYS, 1946
• JAMES BURNHAM AND THE MANAGERIAL EVOLUTION, 1946
• THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, 1947
• ed.: BRITISH PAMPHLETEERS 1, 1948
• NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, 1949 - Vuonna 1984 - film adaptations: 1955, dir. by Michael Anderson; 1985 dir. by Terry Gillam
• SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT, 1950 - Kun ammuin norsun
• ENGLAND, YOUR ENGLAND AND OTHER ESSAYS / SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS, 1953
• A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, 1954
• THE ORWELL READER, 1956
• SELECTED ESSAYS, 1957
• SELECTED WRITINGS, 1958
• COLLECTED ESSAYS, 1961
• DECLINE OF THE ENGLISH MURDER AND OTHER ESSAYS, 1965
• THE COLLECTED ESSAYS, JOURNALISM AND LETTERS OF GEORGE ORWELL 1920-1950, 4 vol., 1968 (ed. by7 Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus)
• THE PENGUIN ESSAYS OF GEORGE ORWELL, 1984
• THE COMPLETE WORKS, 1984 (17 vols.)
• ORWELL: THE WAR BROADCASTS, 1985
• THE COMPLETE WORKS OF GEORGE ORWELL, 1998 (20 vols. ed. by by Peter Davison, assisted by Ian Angus, and Sheila Davison)

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