George Orwell is the pseudonym of english writer Eric Arthur Blair. He was born on June 25, 1903, in India. His parents were British and returned to the UK when the author was still a child. Orwell studied at good schools in England but did not enter university. He worked for the Imperial Indian Police, which he abandoned to devote himself fully to writing.
The author, who died on January 21, 1950, in London, wrote two classics of world literature, that is, the animal revolution and 1984. Your works have a dystopian and allegorical character, in addition to reaffirming the ideological positions of the author, who was anti-fascist, in favor of democracy and advocate of free thinking.
Read too: Aldous Huxley — author of dystopian novel Admirable new world
George Orwell Biography
George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair) was born inJune 25, 1903, in Motihari, India. His father was British and his mother French. As a child, he moved with his family to the UK. There, in 1911, he studied at a boarding school in Henley-on-Thames, England. Then his uncle got him a partial scholarship to study at St. Cyprian's School.
From 1917 to 1921, he studied at Eton College on a scholarship. In this school, hadas a teacher the writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963). In 1922, as he did not have high grades or enough money to pay for university, he took an exam to work with the Imperial Indian Police in Myanmar. But Orwell ran into some problems there, as, being more reserved, he was not popular with his peers.
He left his police job in 1927 to be a writer. So he went back to England. In London, experienced poverty, he lived in cheap pensions and slums. He was not simply an unfortunate, he had chosen this experience as a form of personal, intellectual and artistic growth. In 1928, went to paris, where he lived and wrote for about a year and a half, as well as washing dishes in a luxury hotel.
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He served as a teacher in 1932 and 1933 at The Hawthorns High School in Hayes, England. In 1933 he published his first book— At worst in Paris and London — where he recounts his experiences in London and Paris. At the end of that year, he had severe pneumonia, and the following year he moved to Hampstead, London, where worked in a bookstore, besides having contact with other writers.
In 1934, he managed to publish, in New York, your first novel — Days in Burma — which had been turned down by London publishers. At that time, he was still not valued as a writer, he lived a bohemian life and earned little money. Then, in 1936, Victor Gollancz (1893-1967), a left-wing editor, asked Orwell to write a book about poverty and unemployment.
For this task, Orwell received an advance that allowed him to live for two years. In addition, he decided to live with workers in Wigan, Barnsley and Sheffield for two months. This experience helped him write the book. on the way to Wigan. From then on, started writing essays. In 1937, left for Spain to fight in the civil warin favor of the republic and against the fascists.
was affiliated with Labor Party of Marxist Unification (Workers' Party for Marxist Unification), with an anti-Stalinist stance. Was severely wounded in the neck and he only managed to get out of Spain with the help of his wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy (1905-1945), to whom he had been married since 1936. She worked in the office of the leader of the Independent Labor Party. Thus, the couple managed to flee the country.
In 1938, the writer had to be committed to a sanatorium due to tuberculosis. He then spent time in Morocco. His books, so far, sold little, around three thousand copies. when did the Second World War (1939-1945), Orwell he was rejected by the army due to tuberculosis. Then, from 1941 to 1943, he worked at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In 1943, became editor ofleft-wing newspaper The Tribune.
When, in 1944, Orwell ended the animal revolution (animal farm), the work was rejected by major publishers due to its political content. But when it was finally published, it got critical success and brought fame to the writer. Thus, 250,000 copies of the book were sold in one year.
Orwell's wife, however, died in 1945 of cancer. Widowed, with a son to care for—Richard Blair had been adopted by the couple in 1944—the writer wrote not only for The Tribune but also for The Observer and Manchester Evening News. He began to devote himself to writing the novel 1984, despite complications with tuberculosis, disease that killed him inJanuary 21, 1950, In London.
George Orwell's Literary Features
George Orwell is a writer linked to English Modernism. Therefore, his works have the following characteristics:
simple language;
concise writing;
satirical character;
dystopian plot;
sociopolitical criticism;
ideological character;
allegory;
irony;
pessimism;
absence of idealizations.
Read too: 1922 Modern Art Week — the event that inaugurated Modernism in Brazil
Ideological positions
The fictional, memorialistic and theoretical work of George Orwell allows us to identify the writer as anti-Nazi, antifascist and anti-totalitarian. The author was in favor of democratic socialism; therefore, it became one of the greatest critics of Russian socialism, of a totalitarian nature. Thus, George Orwell was pro-democracy, an advocate of free thought, and a critic of capitalism.
Works by George Orwell
![Cover of the book The Animal Revolution, by George Orwell, published by Companhia das Letras. [1]](/f/f7d00acc67ffb685fb7c210413d027eb.jpg)
At worst in Paris and London (1933) — memoirs.
Days in Burma (1934) — novel.
the reverend's daughter (1935) — novel.
keep the system (1936) — novel.
on the way to Wigan (1937) — memoirs.
Fighting in Spain (1938) — memoirs.
A little air, please! (1939) — novel.
the animal revolution (1945) — novel.
1984 (1949) — novel.
the animal revolution (animal farm) is considered, by some critics, the author's masterpiece, beside 1984. The book satirizes the Russian revolution(1917). In this way, the animals on a farm take power from human beings, with the aim of not being exploited any more. However, they are led by pigs, who are totalitarian.
Thus, the work criticizes the totalitarianism and, above all, human corruption. In this perspective, the characters are allegorical. animals are the proletariat, explored by Jones, the owner of the farm, that is, the capitalist. In this way, the human being is the capitalist; and the animals, the workers enslaved by capitalism.
Major, the oldest pig, is seen by some critical readers as an allegory of Karl Marx (1818-1883). At the beginning of the work, this character sets out the principles of the revolution: “Whoever walks on two legs is an enemy, whoever walks on four legs or has wings is a friend”. He further stresses that animals should not be like man.
But what the Major considers most important is that “an animal should never tyrannize other animals”, because “we are all brothers”. So he declares: "All animals are equal." However, what will happen during the work is that the leaders of the movement, the pigs, will betray these ideals and to do the opposite of what the old Major, who dies three days after his speech, advised.
You pigs are consideredthe smartest animals, so are the leaders. Besides them, there are other emblematic characters, such as the mare Mimosa, which represents a futile and alienated person, as well as the raven Moses, which represents a religious leader. They are all manipulated by pigs, whose top leader is Napoleon, a allegory of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). For his protection, he counts on the dogs, which represent the police.
You principles of animalism are summarized in Seven Commandments.
1- Anything that walks on two legs is an enemy.
2- Anyone who walks on four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3- No animals will wear clothes.
4- No animals will sleep in a bed.
5- No animal will drink alcohol.
6- No animal will kill another animal.
7- All animals are the same.
Corrupt, the pigs will fail to comply with all of them and, at the end of the work, become what, at first, fought, that is, the Man. Allegorically, it's as if Stalin had turned into a capitalist:
“The creatures outside looked from a pig to a man, from a man to a pig, and from a pig to a man again; but it was already impossible to distinguish who was a man, who was a pig"1.
See too: Sagarana — analysis of the inaugural work by Guimarães Rosa
Sentences
Next, let's read some sentences of George Orwell, taken from his essays press freedom, revenge is bitter and Pacifism and Progress, translated by Pedro Maia Soares.
"Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face."
"Make it a habit to arrest fascists without trial and maybe the process won't stop with the fascists."
"Exchanging one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance."
"If freedom means anything, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."
"Revenge is an act you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless."
"A good society is one in which human beings are equal and in which they cooperate with one another willingly and not out of fear or economic compulsion."
"Every war generates new wars."
"The first step towards sanity is to break the cycle of violence."
"The tendency of pacifism is always to weaken the governments and social systems that are most favorable to it."
Note
1 Translated by Hector Ferreira.
Image credit
[1] Company of Letters (reproduction)
by Warley Souza
Literature teacher
