The Life of George Orwell
Brief Biography of George Orwell:
- Born as Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, India
- Moved to England when he was one year old, with his father left behind in India. He did not meet his father until 1912, Orwell found his father to be a conservative and dull person, they never went close with each other
- He had a poem published on a newspaper at the age of 11
- In 1911, Orwell was sent to a boarding school called St. Crprian, where he first experience where people were treated differently due to the status or power he held ( rich and poor)
- Orwell’s family did not have the money to allow him to study in university, forcing him to join India Imperial Force in 1922
- After returning from Burma for 5 years, Orwell started his career as a writer. He published his first book ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, a book talked about when Orwell live poorly in these cities, applying to jobs such as dishwasher. In order to not embarrass his own family, he used a writing name called ‘George Orwell’
- He then published his second book ‘Wintry the Conscience of a Generation’ in 1934, a booked that talked about the dark side of the British Colony that Orwell experienced in Burma. This is also when Orwell started to get his interest toward political topics.
- Orwell got married with a woman called Eileen O’Shaughnessy in 1936
- In 1937, Orwell joined a fighting group in Spain going against General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was shot in the throat and arm
- Orwell went through a lot of different health problem after he returned to England in 1938. One of the biggest sickness was the tuberculosis.
- In 1941, Orwell applied a job as a producer at the BBC. When the World War II broke out, Orwell found his job turned into a propagandist instead of news producer, making him resigned in 1943. After he resigned from BBC, he became a literary editor for a socialist newspaper
- In 1945, Orwell publish one of his two best known novel “Animal Farm”, a anti-Soviet book with two pigs as it’s protagonists, one representing Joseph Stalin and one representing Leon Trotsky.
- In 1949, Orwell published the other of his best known novel “ Nineteen Eighty-Four”, a despairing book where everything of the world is controlled by the government including the thoughts of a person.
- Orwell passed away in a London hospital on January 21, 1950.
What events in his life motivated Orwell to write Animal Farm?
There are many events happen in Orwell’s life that motivated him to write the novel “Animal Farm”. During the teenage time, Orwell studied in in a boarding school called the St. Crprian. It was a school that included a lot of characteristic of totalitarianism, students were divided in the different level and the one with a higher status were allowed to give orders to others [16]. Even when he got to the most elite high school in England through scholarship, he was still discriminated because of his poor background. When Orwell was serving the India Imperial Force, he had a detailed observation of the brutal side of human through how they treated the criminals [16]. These experiences in his early life made Orwell to have sympathy toward the underclass of the society, it also gave him a deep understanding of totalitarianism, and made Orwell started to chase after a dream of having a fair society where everyone is equal to each other.
Starting 1927, Orwell started his four years life of a vagrant. In those four years, he applied to job such as dishwasher, teachers, stevedore, but he was never accepted by any of his fellow workers due to his nobles accents [17]. Orwell experience the unfairness a underclass citizen felt toward the society in these four years.
The Spanish Civil War was the events that had the biggest effect on Orwell. Orwell experienced how immoral Stalin’s totalitarianism was, a lot of people’s rights and lives were taken away under the power of Stalin. It secure Orwell’s thought of supporting a true socialism. Orwell once mentioned in his work “ The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism.” “And so for the last ten years, I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement.”[18]
Starting 1927, Orwell started his four years life of a vagrant. In those four years, he applied to job such as dishwasher, teachers, stevedore, but he was never accepted by any of his fellow workers due to his nobles accents [17]. Orwell experience the unfairness a underclass citizen felt toward the society in these four years.
The Spanish Civil War was the events that had the biggest effect on Orwell. Orwell experienced how immoral Stalin’s totalitarianism was, a lot of people’s rights and lives were taken away under the power of Stalin. It secure Orwell’s thought of supporting a true socialism. Orwell once mentioned in his work “ The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism.” “And so for the last ten years, I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement.”[18]
How successful was he?
I think Orwell did a successful job on showing the readers his dream of how a socialist society looks like through the hand of Snowball, the animals received a fair reward for what they worked. I personally believe that Orwell actually had a hidden message that he was trying to tell us through the novel, other than to satirize the Soviet Union, I think Orwell was trying to tell us that a true socialist society will never be possible to achieve. Once people are in power they will only think about the benefit of themselves, Mr Jones corrupted and so as the Napoleon; This can be referred back to a quote by John Dalberg-Acton “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’[19].