MacFormat 1996 July/macformat-039.iso/DATABASE/SHARED.DIR/01405_135.cap.txt

Text File | 1996-03-14 | 2.9 KB | 190 lines

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Orwell wrote in
what he called
'plain English'. His
plain English is in
fact a highly
accomplished
prose style. Like
Jonathan Swift,
an earlier writer
of political
satires, Orwell
knew how to use
the simplest and
most straight-
forward turns of
phrase to say
far-reaching and
profound things
#
After a spell
as a policeman
in Burma, Orwell
returned to Europe
and lived for a
while in 'fairly
severe poverty'.
Out of these
privations came a
brilliant work of
reportage, Down
And Out in Paris
and London. It is
a witty and
insightful portrait
of poorest of the
urban poor
#
In 1937, Orwell
made a journey
to the north of
England to docu-
ment the lives
of the unemployed.
Here he found yet
more poverty.
Through words
and photographs
he told the story
of the slum-
dwellers, before
setting out his
socialist stall and
offering his own
solutions in a
book, The Road
to Wigan Pier
#
Increasingly
preoccupied by
politics, Orwell
travelled to Spain
to fight in the
civil war. He
found the war
frankly boring
most of the time,
and his account
of it, Homage
to Catalonia, is
tinged with the
same faint
disgust for his
fellow man
(strange in a
socialist) which
is detectable in
Wigan Pier
#
Orwell had the
eye for detail of
a born novelist,
and he could not
help recording
facts which
undermined his
own convictions.
The reviewer of
Homage to
Catalonia picked
up on the sharp
images and used
them, Orwell
thought, to make
an attack on the
political message
of his book
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In 1939, as the
approaching war
in Europe cast its
shadow before it,
Orwell set down
his gloomy vision
of the future, at
the same time
pushing back the
boundaries of the
novel in Coming
Up For Air
#
In 1940, George
Orwell was
rejected by the
army on medical
grounds, but
became a sergeant
in the Home Guard.
In the war years
he was also
literary editor of
Tribune, a left-
wing newspaper,
and he wrote
regularly for
other papers
#
In 1945 Orwell
published Animal
Farm, his most
imaginative and
original work.
This 'fairy story'
in which farm
animals rise up
against their
farmer is an
allegory of the
Russian Revolution
and its betrayal. It
reflects Orwell's
hatred of totali-
tarianism, and his
disillusion with
the practice - if
not the principles
- of communism
#
1949 saw the
publication of
Orwell's powerful
novel, Nineteen
Eighty-Four. The
novel paints a
picture of the
Britain of the
future. It is a
police state, and
the apparatus of
that dictatorship
has been brought
to the point of
perfection, and
it isimpossible
even to think
thoughts which
the authorities
disapprove of
#
As the year 1984
approached, the
British public felt
a certain frisson
of anticipation.
Even those who
had not read
Orwell's vivid and
terrifying novel,
must have had
some sense of
what it contained.
And if Orwell did
not have it abso-
lutely right (say
his admirers), nor
did he get it
altogether wrong
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