George Orwell and his two famous novel Animal Farm and 1984

George Orwell and his two famous novel Animal Farm and 1984

“My Starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself,’ I am going to produce a work of art ‘. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw the attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, it were also an aesthetic experience”. These are the words of British journalist and author, George Orwell, who had written these words in an essay called, “Why I write “in 1946. At the time of reading this essay, I felt that no one has said better than George Orwell how corrupt writing produces corrupt societies and vice versa. According to him, all issues are political issues and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. He further said when general atmosphere is bad , language must suffer and he gave the examples of German , Russian and Italian languages had been deteriorated from 1930 onwards due to result of dictatorships. His three books like Down and out in Paris and London in 1933, The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937 and Homage to Catalonia in 1938 were Non Fictions. He has written Six novels like Burmese Days in 1935, A clergyman’s Daughter in 1935, Keep the Aspidistra flying in 1936 and Coming to the air in 1939; but his two novels has changed his status and world started calling him as a visionary writer after publishing these famous novels Animal Farm in 1945 and Nineteen Eighty Four in 1949. He was first person to coin the term as Cold War in his essay, “You and the Atom Bomb” which was written in 1945 after dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

From Yogesh Gogwekar

George Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair on 25^th June 1903 in the upper middle class family in Motihari, Bihar, India. His father was civil servant in British India. He was a sick child often suffering from bronchitis and the flu. He was brought up by his mother in England. Orwell started his school education from boarding school in England where he noticed that the richer students had been treated better than poor students. He was not comfortable with his friends and started spending his time in reading the books. After getting scholarship, Orwell continued his studies from Wellington College and Eton College but could not continue his university education due to shortage of money. Therefore, he joined to police force and sent to Burma in 1922 where he did not enjoy the work. He resigned from job in 1927 and returned back to England and considered writing as his profession.

In the beginning, he struggled to settle his writing career and in 1928, he went to Paris where he did various menial jobs like dishwasher and later on he came to England and worked as hop-picker in Kent. He did these jobs for research purpose and all these experiences reflected in his first book Down and out in Paris and London in 1933 under the penned name George Orwell. He worked as a School teacher, a book-store clerk to earn his bread and butter. During the World War II, he joined BBC as a propagandist, literature editor and war correspondent.

In the earlier life like other intellectuals of his day, he felt charms of communism and saw that Soviet Union was an embodiment of that great idea. After seeing the horror of Stalin Rule in Soviet Union, he started hating communism and did not extend his sympathy to the communist.  He always considered himself as democratic socialist. He started blacklisting the name of actors, writers, academics and Politicians who supporting communism. According to him, Charli Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, John Steinbeck, G B Shaw, Orson Welles and Cecil Day were supporters of communism. He considered them as untrustworthy and denounced them as unsuitable persons for counter-intelligence operation. Therefore, there was a saying,” if you were a friend of Soviet Union, you could not possible be the friend of George Orwell”. His two novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty four are nothing but savage attacks on the Soviet Union’s descents to worker’s paradise to one-man tyranny. These two novels are being called as a controversial novels and also being called as a visionary novels which hold the true message to every nation wherever freedom is attacked.

Animal Farms is a dystopian novel published 17^th August 1945. It is a story of group of farm animals who have been treated very badly and overworked by their human farmers. Therefore, animals rebel and try to create free society where animals can be treated equal, free and happy. Eventually, animals take over the farm and write down guidelines about working and maintaining of farm. Pig the leader of farm animals takes over the administration and writes down the laws and assigns different duties of other animals in farm. Later power corrupting the minds of pigs and they started manipulating the laws for their own benefits. Ultimately, rebellion is betrayed and farm ends in bad shape. The story of this book is showing different angles of power abuse in politics and it is directly attacking Stalin Rules in Russia and Russian revolution.

Nineteen Eighty four is a most famous novel of George Orwell. This novel was published on 8^th June 1949. Through this book writer wanted to warn about the dangers of Soviet union and communism by giving such topics which point to current issue of excessive power of mass media. It is also the warning against the totalitarian government which insists that reality is not something objective, external, existing its own right, but whatever Party holds to be truth. Winston Smith, the hero of novel, is a protagonist, diligent and skillful worker of Party member who secretly hates the party and tries to become rebellion. He has been arrested by police and persecutes him. In this book, Orwell stated the danger of any state is controlled by the Party’s mysterious leader who forcefully changing the history and language of the nation. This book is nothing but haunting of future. He has given example of Hitler and Stalin. It is good book to read.

Thus, these two books, Animal Farm and 1984 are visionary books and states that dictatorship is always worst form of government.

Many readers are comparing George Orwell with E M Forster. But they were two ends of the pole. In this case, one can say that Forster would betray his country rather than his friends, while George Orwell was constantly betraying friends who supported or accepted dictatorship as a short-term price for achieving a cherished goal. 

Personal Life of George Orwell is fascinating. In his writing, he has mentioned what kind of the person he was and also kind of a writer he became, but not mentioned the reasons for writing under the name of George Orwell. He said that he was miserable at school and yet he was especially happy child. He participated in Spanish Civil war. He was heavy smoker and less interested in food. He married Eileen O’Shaughnessy in June 1936. He received tremendous support from his wife to develop his career in writing; they adopted a son named as Richards Horatio Blair. Due to the death of Eileen in 1945, Orwell’s sister raised him. In October 1949, Orwell married again with Editor Sonia Brownell. On 21^st January 1950, George Orwell died in London hospital due to tuberculosis at the age of 46.

Yes, George Orwell was internationally renowned writer. One should not miss his writing on Mahatma Gandhi. He started the essay with sentence, “Saints should always be judged until they are proved innocent, but the test that to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases. To give definite answer, one should study Gandhi’s act and writings in immense detail, for his whole life was a sort of pilgrimage in which every act was significant”.

I am ending this writing on George Orwell by quoting his words. He said, “If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

Mumbai

25/05/2020