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George Orwell.George Orwell.

Some interesting quotes by George Orwell :

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Things and facts worth knowing about George Orwell.

George Orwell was born at a time when the English Empire had already extended itself all over the world. Along with this empire, there was a colonialist spirit that persisted among many Englishmen of the upper and middle class.

George Orwell was neither a capitalist, nor a communist. He considered himself to be a socialist, because,to him, socialism meant the overthrowing of tyranny everywhere.

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” (Why I Write, 1946)

Despite being strongly egalitarian and someone who was speaking against many forms of bigotry, he still was a bigot on some issues. For example, he was deeply homophobic.

Burmese days

Last row, third from the left.

Orwell spent five years in the 1920's as a policeman in Burma, which was part of the British Empire.

Christopher Hitchens said that the reason why Orwell resigned was that he would end up being a sadist and a racist if he had stayed in that police force.

On the other hand, this experience may have helped him writing his books, as far as he had had an insight into the nature of fascism, into “the thrill of domination” as Hitchens put it.

The Spanish Civil War

Orwell, along with other intellectuals, volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side against the fascists.

He nearly died when he took a bullet in his throat during the war, this injury impaired him for the rest of his life.

Orwell had never been to the USSR

Orwell's account of the reality in communist Russia is outstanding considering the fact that he had never been there.

However he had been acquainted to many communists ideologists when he fought in Spain. During that war he had seen what it was like to live under terror, censorship and fear.

It seemed unbelievable to members of the communist party in eastern Europe who were reading copies of 1984 in secret, that an Englishman who had never been to USSR could have gotten it so right about the reality of Stalinism.

What are the important themes developed by Orwell?

There are recurring themes in 1984 and Animal Farm :

Fear (of punishment, or of another form of dictatorship).

The lack of education that allows the elite to manipulate the rest of the population.

The loneliness of those who know the truth.

The importance of fear in totalitarian regimes

Along with Marjane Satrapi, Orwell had perfectly understood that fear is the most efficient tool to keep people in line.

Both 1984 and Animal Farm contain good examples of the use of fear. Winston Smith is always scared of something he doesn't really know much about (the thought police, what happens in the Ministry of “Love”?). And the animals were constantly scared that Mr. Jones might come back.

Education is the worst enemy of those who want to manipulate people.

In 1984 : Newspeak is one of the tool that weakens people's ability to understand what is going on.

Because it reduces the vocabulary and prevents people from being able to nuance/grade their sayings.

Outsmarted by the pigs, and having no access to proper education, the animals are blind to the pigs' maneuvers to manipulate them, the same way we can be outsmarted by people more knowledgeable than us.

In Animal Farm : the animals's lack of education prevents them from seeing that the pigs are taking advantage of them.

Those who know the truth are lonely

There are several lonely characters in 1984 and Animal Farm.

The most obvious one is Winston Smith, who thinks he's the last man in the country who's impervious to the lies of Big Brother, the only human being who refuses to believe the lies of the party but who has nobody to talk to, for he knows that talking to somebody might cause his premature death.

Snowball is also a lonely characters, because he was driven out of the farm because he stood in the way of Napoleon, which is unfortunate for he genuinely wanted to turn the farm into a paradise for animals.

Benjamin, the donkey, is the only learned animal on the farm but he refuses to speak or exercise his faculty, because to him there's “nothing worth reading”.