The Evolution Of Orwell

Born in 1903 right after the end of the Victorian Era in England, Eric Blair ( later known to the world as George Orwell ) was born into a "lower, upper, middle class family".  By all accounts Blair should have lived a predictable life of security and comfort, while working for the British Empire much as his father did.  What historical, personal and psycho-socio events transformed Blair into Orwell? 

Best known for his later works 1984 and Animal Farm; Orwell lived an eventful and interesting yet short life which both influenced his work as well as transforming him into one of the century's most important literary rebels.  This paper will follow in Orwell's footsteps through the oppressive British public ( private ) school system to the jungles of Burma where he served as an Imperial British Police officer..   This research paper shall revisit his times in the slums of Paris and London, to the trenches of the Spanish Civil War.  Orwell dove in head first and experienced the things he wrote of.  In many ways he is the model of modern investigative journalism as well as historical-political fiction. 

Though Blair/Orwell was a hero of sorts to many, he was also a very complex and  highly flawed man.  Was his chosen life of poverty and discomfort an attempt to expose social injustices by experiencing them first hand ?  Or were they a self indulgent type of martyrdom?  Getting to know the man has proved to be elusive as he was a mystery even to those close to him.  He was a contradiction in many ways. His most famous works are brutal with decidedly unhappy endings, yet he was a quiet and gentle man who loved the simple pleasures.  Did Orwell and others like him shape the times, or did the times shape them? This paper will examine this, as well as, if and how Orwell shaped the future.

Any scholar of Orwell worth their salt can read his life through his fiction.  In Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936) protagonist Gordon Comstock is a poet who has disappointed his family and chosen to live the life of an impoverished writer, rather than taking the safe and comfortable option in life of using his education and connections to have a position of substance.  Comstock declares war on money and unwittingly creates innocent casualties in his war. 

Orwell, much to the chagrin of his family left a safe post within the British Empire to pursue  contemporarily questionable writing.   Comstock is also the "last of the Comstocks" with parents who have died and his only family a spinster sister.  Orwell was the last male heir of his family and one that showed no signs of marriage for several years.

Burmese Days is an excellent fictional account of British far east imperialism and its fallout.  Orwell was born in India and his father was an opium agent for the British crown.  Following his graduation from Eton, Orwell was an Imperial British police officer. It was a position of power completely unsuitable for a man who would spend most of his career writing against and exposing such oppression.

Animal Farm is a political fairy tale which shows the evolution of utopian political theory and the actual implementation and practice of it when human foibles are added to the mix.  It is also a portrait of Orwell's gentle love for animals.