The Evolution of Orwell

Scott Swenson

ENG.103

Prof. McCormick

Oct 28, 2010

                       The Evolution of George Orwell

Born in 1903 at the end of England’s Victorian Era, Eric Arthur Blair (Better known throughout the world as the author George Orwell.) was born into an “upper-lower-middle class family.”  By all accounts Blair should have lived a predictable life of comfort and security, while working for the British Empire much as his father had. Many historical, personal and psycho-socio events throughout his lifetime transformed Blair into the literary rebel, George Orwell.

Best known for his later works; Animal Farm and 1984, Orwell lived an eventful, interesting yet short life, which both influenced his work as well as shaped him into one of the most important and influential writers of the 20^th century. This paper will follow Orwell’s footsteps through his days as a young boy in the oppressive British public schools to the jungles of colonial Burma where he served on the Imperial Burmese Police. This paper will also revisit Orwell’s arguably self imposed poverty in the slums of Paris and London to the trenches of the Spanish Civil War fighting against the fascists.

Orwell was almost always anti-establishment in his fiction as well as his journals and reviews. This attitude can be traced all the way back to his earliest school days at the St. Cyprians School which he renamed "Crossgates" in his bitter and sarcastically named essay Such, Such Were the Joys.  By Orwell's account St. Cyprians was a brutal and oppressive place where as a young boy he learned his first painful lessons about power, privilege, politics and social status. These would become reoccurring themes throughout his life's work.  Such, Such Were the Joys was written very late in Orwell's life, which also shows what a powerful impact his time at St, Cyprians had on him. He was nearing the end of his life, in poor health and most likely being reflective.  At St Cyprian's Orwell was one of the financially poorer students, and the headmaster's wife; (nicknamed 'Flip') who was a phony, social climbing snob who made the young Orwell feel unworthy and an ingrate because his family was paying reduced fees.  He was actually an excellent student at St. Cyprians and won a scholarship to the prestigious Eton School, where he 'slacked off'. Although Such, Such Were the Joys was written relatively late in Orwell’s life and after he had become an established author, it is perhaps most important to note that this is evidence of the beginning of his evolution as a man and as an author.

Orwell dove in head first and experienced the things he wrote of.  In many ways he is the quintessential model of the modern investigative journalist.  These experiences shaped the socio-political fiction that he is most famous for.

Though Orwell was and is 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 the social injustices of the time by experiencing them first hand and reporting on them? Or, was it a cynical yet self indulgent type of martyrdom?

Some people have accused Orwell of “slumming.” It is true he could always stop when he wanted to, always had somewhere to go for a bath, a change, a meal and a place to write his notes. The longest period he spent at a time in this underworld was six weeks. But how else could he have produced his work on poverty? Certainly not by being literally destitute and without hope” (Lewis 1983) Perhaps Orwell was “slumming” while he lived and worked in Paris as a dishwasher and later as a tramp in London. But was his volunteering in the Spanish Civil War where he was shot in the neck just posturing? What about his essay How the Poor Die  where he wrote of spending several weeks in a Parisian hospital for the indigent being “treated” for the respiratory ailments which plagued him throughout his life and would eventually take his life?

          "In the public wards of hospitals you see horrors that you don't seem to meet with among people who manage to die in their own homes, as though certain diseases only attacked people at the lower income levels. But it is a fact that you would not in any English hospitals see some of the things I saw in the Hospital X. This business of dying like animals, for instance, with nobody interested, the death not even noticed till the morning—this happened more than once" (Orwell 1946)

Surely there are safer ways to go slumming. If Orwell was indeed “slumming”, he did so at great personal risk to himself.

As with Such, Such Were the Joys; How the Poor Die was written in 1946.  It is from the same time he constructed Down and Out in Paris in London, which was published 20 years later.  Down and Out is one of the first hand accounts of living in poverty. It explores the quiet dignity of the poor masses, and in the latter part of the book offers more social commentary.  Orwell grew up with English authors like Charles Dickens, who also wrote about the poor in his fiction and also investigated how they lived.  Based on his reviews, Orwell was a fan of Dickens, yet he (Orwell) took things a step further.  Dickens visited poor areas and slums and wrote sympathetically of them, whereas Orwell lived among the poor in their slums.  Dickens may have brought some attention to the plight of the poor and hopeless, but rather than clamoring for social change, his fiction is more about wealthy benefactors, comeuppance or change of heart of the rich, greedy and cruel, and of the poor protagonists overcoming all odds and become rich themselves. 

Researching and getting to know the man has been elusive as he was a mystery even to those closest to him.  Orwell is often a study in contradictions.   His most famous works are quite brutal and have decidedly unhappy and even hopeless endings; and yet Orwell was in many ways a quiet and gentle man who enjoyed life’s simple pleasures.

                 As he explained, "I like English cookery and English beer, French red wines, Spanish white wines, Indian tea, strong tobacco, coal fires, candlelight and comfortable chairs. I dislike big towns, noise, motor cars, the radio, tinned food, central heating and modern furniture." (Landon Y. Jones. People Weekly 1984)

Did Orwell and his contemporaries help to shape the times? Or, did the times shape them and their work? This paper will examine these questions.  The answers are not as cut and dried as one may like, but this is part of Orwell’s enigmatic appeal.  Orwell was arguably one of the most prophetic authors of his time. In many ways 1984 and Animal Farm are highly intuitive novels.  Animal Farm is an obvious analogy of the Russian Revolution, or perhaps any communist/Marxist and even socialist revolution.  The animals under the brutal yoke of Mr. Jones rebel, to create a utopia of their own.  The pigs, who are the ‘thinkers’ on the farm, each have a specific Russian revolutionary’s role in the novel.  The pig,‘Snowball’ like Trotsky is driven from the farm by the other pigs for being progressive, and not going along with the other pigs exploitative agenda. ‘Old Major’ is the obvious Lenin or Marx representation with dreams of equality and a workers paradise.  Old Major’s vision of Animal Farm descends into an abysmal failure of greed coupled with incompetence.  The remaining pigs become as bad, or perhaps worse than Farmer Jones ever was.  They are not just greedy and corrupt, but they are also traitors to the other animals of the farm.

                      “ Twelve voices were all shouting in anger, and they were all alike.  No question now what had happened to the faces of the pigs.  The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which” (Orwell)

Animal Farm is a post Russian Revolution statement on the human factors that make communism and Marxism an impossibility.  Old Majors dream and vision look ‘good on paper’ as do the theories of Marx, until greed, corruption and a sense of entitlement enter the picture.  Orwell had the luxury of watching the failure of the goals and ambitions of the Russian Revolution to the oppressive and ultimately doomed Soviet Union .

Animal Farm is a fairy tale; something to explain to little children of the cold war generation how things came to be in the sick, sad world.  1984 is no fairy tale.  It is a nightmare vision of the future. Written in the late 40s about a world to come; 1984 is similar in style to the early science fiction that Orwell loved and grew up with in the tradition of  H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Despite it’s style 1984 is not science fiction.  The technology of Orwell’s fictional state Oceania was all in its embryonic stage at the time it was written.  Things such as “telescreens”, truth serums and helicopters all came to be.  1984 is dark and frightening enough, but the passage of time which shows how prophetic Orwell’s forecast was in 1984 that truly terrifies.  “Orwellian” and “Big Brother” have become part of the modern vernacular.  The original title of 1984 was The Last Man in Europe . Protagonist Winston Smith is in many ways, the last man in Europe .  Even the name “Smith” makes him an anonymous everyman.  Winston is an obvious reference to Churchill, who became an obsolete man of the British Empire after serving as Prime Minister during the Second World War.  Winston is in his own terms a “minority of one.”  He cannot, despite his best efforts buy into the concept of “doublethink.”   The criteria of doublethink is alive and well today.  During the second gulf war the “coalition” went to war with Saddam Hussein and Iraq over “proof” of WMDs and ties to terrorism.  When these reasons proved to be wrong, mistakes were not admitted, the reasons just changed. It became “Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator who needs to be stopped” and “The Iraqi people must be saved”.   Just as Oceania is in a constant state of war one of the other super states in the novel, and allies with the other. When these alliances change, Oceania changes the past through control of the press and every other media that nothing has changed “Oceania is at war with Eurasia, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia .”  As Winston destroys the old records within the Ministry of Truth, he is seemingly alone in his ability to remember how things were, even a short time ago. 

It can be said of Orwell that one of his primary philosophies is that “Happiness can only be achieved if it is not ones goal or expectation in life” Even by those closest to him Orwell was often described as dour, awkward and generally unhappy.  He was the middle child of three with five years between each sibling’s birth. He didn’t meet his father who was stationed in India until he was eight.  As a result, as a young boy Orwell spent a great deal of time alone.  He admitted later the effect this had on him in his essay Why I Write.

“I was somewhat lonely and soon developed the disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued.”  (Orwell: An Age Like This; 1920-1940 Page 1)

Any scholar on Orwell worth their salt can see his life throughout his fiction.  In his first novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) protagonist Gordon Comstock is an aspiring poet who has disappointed his family and chosen to live the life of an impoverished writer, rather than using his education and connections to have a position of substance with an advertising firm.  Comstock “declares war” on money and unwittingly creates innocent casualties in his war. Aspidistra asks many questions never pondered before in regards to money. Is it merely a medium of exchange, or is it an entity of its own?  Can one live without money in the modern world, or is it a necessary evil? Similarly to Aspidistras  Comstock and  much to the chagrin of his family, Orwell left a safe post working for the British Empire to pursue contemporarily questionable writing.  Comstock never gets very far as a poet.  Orwell too, never knew much commercial success during his lifetime. The reason for Orwell’s decision to leave the Imperial Police was that he began to take note of the ruthless colonialism.  His guilt over his position is obvious and is one of the reoccurring themes throughout his body of work.

                  “The guilt itself he attributes to his previous service in the (Imperial) police in Burma . It made him part of an oppressive system he came to hate with bitterness” ( Lewis 83)

This shows that Orwell had sensitivities unlike many of his peers.  Arguably another reason Orwell left this position was his relationship, or lack thereof with his father.  Orwell’s father, the man he had not met until he was 8 years old, was an Opium Agent for the British Crown in India. Orwell would later say of his father that he remembered him as a large, grey haired man constantly telling him (Orwell) “Don’t.”  Orwell became a father late in life with his adopted son Richard Blair.  Orwell’s wife died shortly after Richard’s adoption leaving Orwell to care for the young boy himself.  Unlike Orwell’s father; Richard Walmsley Blair, Orwell was, by all accounts a loving and doting father.

                    “He was absolutely marvelous with Richard, carrying him everywhere on his hip. Richard adored him.  It was unusual in those days for fathers to be interested in babies. George was” (Celia Paget in Peter Lewis’ George Orwell 1983)

Later Richard Blair would be interviewed in The (London) Sunday Times about his short but loving relationship with his famous father.

                           “Richard was only six when Orwell died in January 1950, but he remembers him with great warmth. He had, he says, “a heart of deep paternal affection”. As you might expect, Richard's recollection of their time together is patchy, and he cannot recall Eileen at all. What do remain vivid for him, however, are the years he spent with his father on the island of Jura .” (The Times)

Orwell had moved to Jura off the coast of Scotland where he worked on and completed his last and most famous books while raising Richard more or less alone and combating TB which would ultimately take his life.

There is almost a coinciding chronology where one may analyze what Orwell was doing, where he was living, his age and how it was shaping his viewpoints and ultimately his work.  His bibliography begins in 1933 with Down and Out in Paris and London, and ends with his final work 1984 in 1948 just before his death.  A great deal of his older work became marketable and therefore published after the success and fame he received from Animal Farm  and 1984. He was not writing seriously while stationed in Burma, but his time in Burma helping to impose the empire’s will shaped his writing dramatically.  He would revisit his experience in Burma in 1934 in the fictional Burmese Days.  Once again Burmese Days is semi-autobiographical.  The protagonist;  James Flory realizes the futility and corruption of imperialism and yet is too cowardly to take a stand, even in the most minor way.  Flory tows the empire line much as Orwell did with his time in Burma.  Flory’s attitude and philosophy is similar to that of the “Newspeak” concept of “Doublethink” Orwell would later write of in 1984.  He knows right from wrong, yet he often doesn’t follow his conscience, but rather goes along with his racist whiskey soaked cronies.  Doublethink is best described by Orwell himself

          “ To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink..  (Orwell 1984)

Brutality was what the British and other imperial powers used to impose their will on their colonies, and anyone with a shred of morality working for those powers must employ exercises like doublethink to justify their actions.  It seemed Orwell, like 1984’s  everyman “hero” Winston Smith, had difficulty swallowing the theory of doublethink. This made Winston a ”thought criminal” and Orwell a rebel spearheading the changing times. The original title for 1984 was The Last Man in Europe.  From Orwell’s writing the reader gets the impression that he also felt like the “last” man. 

Many of Orwell's bibliographies are laced with interesting insights into his his philosophical journey.  For Example:

          1936: Keep the Aspidistra Flying: Semi-autobiographical fiction about money. What people do for money. Exploration of the "Haves" and the "Have Not’s" Is it possible to "reject" money? Can one live without it? Is it much more than a medium of exchange?  Gordon Comstock fails in his war against money, or rather he capitulates and succumbs. Orwell had a brief brush with financial and critical success just prior to his death, and yet chose a spartan lifestyle on the desolate island of Jura for his son Richard and himself.  This lifestyle decision was a double edged sword; it undoubtedly assisted Orwell’s creative process, while further deteriorating his already failing health.

Orwell’s health or lack thereof is another reoccurring theme throughout his work. He had respiratory problems from early childhood, complicated by being a heavy, lifelong smoker. Orwell uses tobacco symbolically in much of his fiction as well as his journals.  Orwell equated tobacco, (the quality, abundance, etc) with wealth, prosperity and comfort. (1984, Aspidistra, and Down and Out)

His poor health was in many ways a badge of honor for Orwell.  To him it was undeniable truth that he understood the plight of the downtrodden, and that in fact, he was one of them.  Almost everyone is unhealthy in the nation of Oceania in Orwell’s 1984.   In addition to his poor health being proof of his understanding of the effects of poverty, it is also very much a holdover of the longstanding Victorian belief that a certain level of suffering and deprivation built “character”.  There was never quite enough to eat at St.Cyprians and Orwell’s serious respiratory ailments were diagnosed as being a result of eating too much by an obviously quack Victorian doctor. Throughout all of his writing, both fiction and journalism he uses food and especially tobacco symbolically to represent wealth and prosperity or the lack thereof.

The animals in Animal Farm may suffer at the hands of various antagonistic forces, but they never seem to be starving or in poor health. There are, however many examples of greed, corruption and theft throughout the book. Suffering is another universal and reoccurring theme with Orwell.  In addition to being a large part of his make up as a man and as a writer, he understood that suffering can be a means of power. This is described bluntly in an exchange between Winston Smith after his arrest and his tormentor O’Brien deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Love in 1984.

                      He paused and for a moment again assumed his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil:  “How does one man assert his power over another Winston?”  Winston thought.  “By making him suffer,” he said. “Exactly, by making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering how can you be certain that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation…”(Orwell)

Orwell has an odd and seldom complimentary attitude toward women throughout his work.  He thought himself to be unattractive and was raised on the post-Victorian ideal that sex was something that women endured rather than enjoyed.  Winston Smith’s lover Julia seems to enjoy sex in 1984; but the act is also a form of rebellion against the oppressive party.  The women of Orwell’s books are not intelligent or attractive.  Julia is boyish and “not clever”.  Gordon Comstock’s sister, also named Julia in Aspidistra  is a shrewish and simple woman who exists to lend Gordon money. Even the mare “Mollie” in Animal Farm is a vain and silly creature.

                            “As Winter drew on Mollie became more troublesome. She was late for work every morning…On every type of pretext she would run away from work and go to the drinking pool, where she would stand foolishly gazing at her own reflection in the water.” (Orwell)

The women of Down and Out are all “mistresses.”  They are a commodity, and a symbol of prosperity and little more.  The mistresses and prostitutes abound in the Parisian first half of the book. Women are barely mentioned as Orwell spent time as a tramp in London, except perhaps that they are an impossibility on any social level for a tramp. Orwell was married twice and seemed to have appreciated both of his wives. By all accounts they were attractive, caring and highly intelligent women.  Both of them cared for him as best they could and seemed to accept that they would take a backseat to his work at all times.  It is interesting that such a progressive writer as Orwell should have such antiquated views in regards to women.  This is not the only example of Orwell being a traditional product of Post-Victorian England.  Another example is Orwell’s attitudes toward violence and corporal punishment.  Orwell spent time as a teacher and it was said he was not shy with using the cane. Despite being a strict disciplinarian as a teacher, he was a very popular teacher with his students.  He enjoyed and understood the pursuits of boys such as fishing and hiking.  It also seems that the English students of the time did not take corporal punishment by a teacher personally, but rather as a matter of course.  There is no evidence that Orwell ever hit his young adopted son Richard which was touched upon earlier. He delighted in taking Richard everywhere with him and carving wooden toys for the little boy.

It would be impossible to write of the evolution of Orwell without writing of his contemporaries and influences.  Dickens has been mentioned already. H.G. Wells was also a huge influence on Orwell.  Orwell and Wells would have a literary spat of sorts later when Orwell had written some scathing reviews of his boyhood literary hero, to which Wells responded in kind.  Wells was much more of a utopian author and Orwell was quite bleak and unbending by comparison.

Sources Cited

Orwell, George  “How the Poor Die”  http://orwell.ru/library/articles/Poor_Die/english/e_pdie,  20 Nov 2010 Web

Jones, Landon Y “George Orwell” People Weekly

Published Jan 9, 1984. 20 Nov 2010 Web

Orwell, George “Animal Farm” Harcourt/Brace and Co. NYC Published 1995. (Print)

Page 157

Orwell, George “1984” Plume/Harcourt & Brace NYC Published 1983 (Print)

Pages 237-238 and Pages 301

Carey, John “Oxford Literary Festival: George Orwell’s Son Speaks for the First Time about His Father  http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article5889541.ece  (Web) The Sunday Times Nov 2010

Orwell, George “Why I Write” (An Age Like This 1920-1940 Vol 1)  Harcourt/Brace & World 1968 Page 1