BIOGRAPHY
Eric Blair was born in Molihari (Bengala) in 1903 in a middle-class
family. In 1904, they went to live in England and he went to Saint Cyprien
School. In 1917, when he was 14, he entered in the renowned Eton. This
was an elegant and expensive public school, where he began to develop his
social and political thoughts. His stay in this school was very important
for him, because he began to understand -although he hasn´t clear
ideas yet- the problems of a society in the time of the World War I. But
it was very traumatic too. He was in an expensive and snobbish school which
began to disgust him. He was a revolutionary and he didn´t fit in
a school like that.
When he finished his studies in Eton, Orwell didn´t went to Oxford.
Instead of this, he entered in the Burma Police from 1922 to 1928. He began
to understand the real meaning of colonialism, and he wrote about it. His
political thoughts were much influenced by what he saw there and he began
to have clearer ideas about the social problems of that time.
In 1928, he left the colonies and went to the north of England. He had been asked to write a report about the situation of the working class in a period of unemployment. He wrote The road to Wigan Pier. This made him think about the necesity of socialism and he became an involved writer.
After that, he went to Paris. He lived in the outskirts of the city
and like the poor people. This way he got involved with the situation of
this people and began to understand their problems better.
In 1937, he took part in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the POUM.
Here started one of the most important periods of his life, and therefore,
of his novels. This war made him understand another aspects of totalitarism
and he began to think about communism. After that, he wrote one of his
most important novels : Homage to Catalonia, in which he tells his experiences
in the war.
In 1939, the World War II started. Orwell wanted to colaborate, but
he couldn´t because he was ill.
In 1945, he published another one of his most important works: Animal
Farm and in 1949, his last and (most people think) most important one:
Nineteen Eigthy-Four. In both novels, he critizises totalitarism as a system
of political and social organization. Animal Farm satirizes the soviet
process which -as he said- betrayed the fumnamental principles of socialism.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, we found events which remember us the Russian
Revolution and the Spanish Civil War.
Eric Blair died in London in 1950, when he was 46 years old.
THE GROWTH OF A
SOCIALIST FEELING
In 1922, after leaving Eton, Orwell went to work in the Burma Police.
His desition shocked his parents and friends, but he had reasons to do
it. As Gutiérrez Álvarez writes, he did not want to go to
University, because if he went, he would have to depend on the teachers.
Also he didn´t want his parents to make such a great effort to pay
his studies. But, at that moment, he didn´t know what it meant having
that job.
Before arriving in Burma, he didn´t know the situation of the
natives. When he got there, he was shocked and desilusioned, because he
started to understand it. At this moment it happened that his mind started
to change. He started to think a lot about the problems of the people in
the town and he felt very bad, because he couldn´t explain what he
was feeling about all the unfairness he was seeing.
Some time later, the situation between the natives and the british was getting worse. The hostility was increasing, so the confrontations started to increase too. The racism of the british made it worse and the fight was very cruel.
Meanwhile, seeing all this, Eric began to feel guilty, because he was
one of the opressors of the natives. His anti-imperialist feeling made
him decide to leave Burma. In 1927, he resigned and came back to England.
At that moment, he decided to become a writer, to write for the society,
and above all, for the people who need more help: the opressed.He still
felt guilty, this is why he started to write articles. At first, they weren´t
very good, but, after some time, he became a good writer.
His experiences in Burma teached him more than any book he had read before.
After knowing the conditions of the people in Burma, he went to the north of England in order to know more about the working-class in a moment of unemployment.
In 1928, he went to Paris. He went to live in the outskirts of the city.
He met the poorest and began to live like them in order to understand their
situation their feelings.
All these experiences contributed to shape his socialist ideas and made
him write many articles and some books, like Burmese Days, The Road to
Wigan Pier, Down and Out in Paris and London in which we can observe shocking
and sublime human reports about the situation of the society.
THE SPANISH CIVIL
WAR
If we want to understand Orwell´s political ideas and the way they evolutionated, it is important to take into account his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. This provoked a change in his mind. Concepts like revolution, socialism, freedom,... began to have a different sense for him.
As Gutiérrez Alvarez says, before the war, he didn´t have many relations with socialism. He was rebel, anticolonialist, pacifist, humanist, and he was convinced with the idea that some changes were needed.
When the fascism arrived in Spain, he felt he needed to go there and
fight against it. There are several opinions about why he came to Spain.
Some authors think he came because he wanted to fight for freedom. Other
authors think that Orwell wasn´t a revolutionary; he came here because
he wanted to write a novel about the war and he needed to be in contact
with the situation. It seems that there were several factors which made
him come to fight.
In Spain, as the author says, he fought for freedom, in favour of the socialist revolution, but he saw how this freedom was traited by stalinism. It was at this moment when he began to attack communism. He thought that Marxismus had some dangerous principles, because they could be interpreted in many different ways. So, he was convinced with the necessity of socialism in the world. But he demanded a new socialism; an autentic one. The only way to achieve this was having revolutionary and feasible ideas.
There are several opinions about his novel Homage to Catalonia. It was written in 1937, after his experiences during
the war.Some authors think it is poor novel, others -like Gutiérrez- think this is one of his best literary works. The first ones accuse Orwell of not having very clear political ideas, but the other prise his clearness and sincerity. Some historian have taken this novel as a base for their works.
What he wanted when he wrote this novel was to give a sincere testimony
of the events during the Spanish Civil War. He had observed that many authors
weren´t sincere when they wrote about this war; they made up events
and told other ones in the way they wanted. He was totally against it.
This was one of the things most hated Orwell, and most reported in his
novels -most of all in Ninetten Eighty-Four. This is why, as we have said,
he tried to give us a truthful testimony of was had happened -and was still
hapenning- in Spain.
ANIMAL FARM
To talk about this novel, I am also going to base my work on Gutiérrez
Álvarez.
In 1945, Orwell finished his novel Animal Farm. At the beginning, he had serious problems to publish it. It was a difficult moment, after the World War II, to write a novel against communism in such a clear way.
In this novel, some animals of a farm rebel against their oppressors,
the human, and take the power in the farm after throwing them out. At the
beginning everything goes well; all the animals are the same -there´s
no hierarchy-, but one day, the discord appears. One of the most intelligent
gets the power, becomes a despot monarch and, from that moment on, everybody
has to adore him. He changes the history and the principles of all the
animals. Some time later, the animals live as oppressed as before. They
live a situation of horror and slaveness.
With this novel, Orwell tried to satirize an important period for the soviet communism and all the world in general. His intention was to critizise the communist revolution and to demand socialism as the fundamental political doctrine. Some authors think that there are aspects in the novel which seem contradictory. We know that Orwell was against communism, but his anti-power, anti-domination ideas weren´t enough in the soviet case, where many other different factors took place.
William Empson, for instance, wrote to Orwell and told him that he had
written a marvellous novel, but he wanted to warn him, because he thought
Orwell was going to be totally misunderstood. This was because, when an
author writes a book, he says more than he wants to, this way the book
is opened to many different interpretations.
Definitively, after reading Animal Farm, we see Orwell like an artist.
He tried to satirize a complicated historical period, and this was difficult
to do in a novel like this. His novel isn´t a scientific work. It
is a suggerent satire full of irony.
COMMENTS ON NINETEEN
EIGHTY-FOUR
Nineteen Eighty-Four isn´t a novel which speaks about the technology in the future. This novel, not only tries to tell us the problems we would have if the machines become the centre of our lives. It goes beyond this idea. Nineteen Eighty-Four isn´t a prophecy; it is a warning. This warning consists of the threat of totalitarism.
Orwell hated fascist totalitarism and the communist one in the same way. We can observe these aspects in his novels, most of all in Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm and, as we will see, in Nineteen Eighty-Four. He fought against fascism as a writer, but he also did it fighting in the Spanish Civil War. However, at that moment -when he writes his last novel-, Hitler and Mussolini had already been defeated. On the contrary, communism appeared like a new kind of democracy, like a superior force. Orwell noticed in communism the essence of totalitarism and he wanted to fight against it.
As the author says, before this one, he wrote other articles and novels
which refer to the same topic. We find two novels which were writen before
Nineteen Eighty-Four and are its . The first is The Road to Wigan Pier.
As we have seen before, this novel was written after his social experiences
in the north of England, where he was sent in order to write a report.
He observed the situation of the unemployed and compared it with that of
the natives in Burma (where he had been working as a police some years
before). After this, he was convinced that socialism was necessary. The
other novel is Homage to Catalonia. As we know, this novel was written
after the Spanish Civil War. During this war, his ideology changed. His
mind suffered a process, an evolution that was reflected in his literary
works.
As I have said, this two novels marked an evolution of a thought which
culminated with Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this novel we can easily observe
the essence of the communism of the soviet. The kind of political party,
the Big Brother, the way in which the people treat him, the manipulation
of the past,... refer to that situation. Orwell was sure that the soviet
system was a big deformation of the socialist ideals.
During all this time, Orwell had been thinking about this novel. He
was thinking about it even before writing Animal Farm. In the end of the
World War II and at the beginning of the Cold War, he saw a world dominated
by terror. He thought that fascism was the worst enemy, but at that moment
its oppositors were assuming this totalitarian tendencies. He saw a world
were the powerfull would destroy the lower classes. All this was what made
him write this novel, considered -by most critics- a masterpiece.
THE CONTROL OF THE
TIME
The forgery of the historical events is an ancient political activity.
Formerly, they used to do it. Militaries and noblemen made up false dinasties
in order to have more power and status.
As G. Fernández says, everybody knows that it also happens nowadays. We can observe that the same piece of news can very much vary from one newspaper to another. This means that there are people who try to manipulate things which have already happened. This occurs because there are sectors in politics that want to change some things or make it disapear to one´s advantage, in order to make the people think what they wan
This is a main aspect in George Orwell´s novels. This is what
he most hated and talked about, because he felt that he needed to do it,
he needed to warn people, to inform them about what was happening and what
could happen in the future.
Orwell thought that the most important aspect of totalitarism was, as
we have just said, that the past can be changed. These people can rewrite
all testimonies from the past: mewspapers, magazines, books,... When they
began to rewrite the documents, they cannot stop doing it, so in the end,
we find that our history, the history of our parents has completely changed;
it has disapeared. It is clear that this method has many advantages for
the governors. They want to live in a world in which things only exist
in the way they understand them, and an event only exists if they want
it to. Doing this they are sure that they control the people´s minds,
their memories. And this allows them to configurate the personality of
the citizens. This way, the authority of the party increases, because,
after some time, the wew generations don´t know anything but what
the party want them to know, so, it seems that the government has done
everything alright. Moreover, this will condition the behaviour of the
people in the future. A society which is based on lies doesn´t progress.
The politicians get used to lie and the rest of the people get used to
hear them lying, for instance, promising thigs which are impossible.
Orwell reflects this aspect in some of his novels, but mostly in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Juan Ignacio Ferreras, in his article about this novel, says that this is a political one. A pessimistic one. Orwell knows about the irrationality of this world, but he doesn´t want to find a solution, he wants to inform us and to warn about what can happen in the future.
Orwell creates an imaginary world, in which people haven´t freedom
at all, because they live in a totalitarian country. All they do is controlled
by a "governor" called Big Brother. In my opinion it is a horror novel.
It is so irrational that make us be afraid when we read it. It represents
a big univers where every movement is controlled and the individuality
doesn´t exist. Even the people´s thoughts are controlled. I´ve
said that we are afraid when we read this novel. This is because we find
similarities in our world. Something like Nineteen Eighty-Four cannot happen
in a real world, but can happen something similar. When we read the novel
we feel like being inside it, inside the main character. We feel really
afraid when we think that something similar can happen in the future.