“From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.” — Eric Blair (aka George Orwell), ‘Why I Write’
Eric Blair earned a scholarship to Eton, which allowed him to go to the poshest English school; but he felt acutely the distance between himself and his richer, more titled classmates. He was bright but not a diligent scholar, and without another scholarship his family couldn’t afford university for him. Instead, Eric earned a posting in the Imperial Police in Burma. These intimate experiences of oppression and hypocrisy gradually turned Eric against Imperialism, and into a Democratic Socialist.
After Burma, Eric turned to writing, and to gathering more experience to write about. He was a naturally gifted writer, already successful as a journalist in his early twenties. Partly through his circumstances, partly by choice, he wandered as a tramp for a few years, gathering all that he lived and heard from others into his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London. To spare his family any embarrassment over his lowlife confessions, Eric adopted the pen name George Orwell. This book was a modest success. Orwell then wrote some mediocre novels, which didn’t sell much, but allowed him to learn the craft and mechanics of the novel, and to stretch his own style into new flavors: “I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages”.
Orwell was a prodigious journalist, essayist and critic for twenty years. He wrote four novels, and also three books based on his own experiences: Down and Out in Paris and London; The Road to Wigan Pier, about bleak living conditions among the working class in the industrial north of England; and Homage to Catalonia, about fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
All of that living, observing, thinking and especially writing shaped Orwell into a first-rate novelist. He then produced two of the most resounding 20th Century novels: Animal Farm and 1984. But he died a tragic Dickensian death, from tuberculosis, when only 46. It was a cruel stroke of fate. Considering how he grew over his career, Orwell died just as he was starting to become one of the greatest English novelists. Indeed, The Times made a list of the greatest British writers since 1945 — they placed Orwell 2nd.
Where to Begin with George Orwell
You have likely already read 1984 or Animal Farm. Both are critically praised bestsellers. Both are often assigned in high school or college English classes, for their superb storytelling, and for the clarity and directness of Orwell’s prose. 1984 leaped into the bestseller lists again when Trump got elected, because its themes resonate with Trump’s fascist demagoguery and incessant lying. This also holds somewhat for Animal Farm. If you’ve never read either, they are both compelling and thought-provoking books. Fair warning, they each include a lot of grim suffering, as Orwell examines all the human (and bestial) manifestations of piggishness and evil. Here is the text of Animal Farm.
Orwell is a magnificent essayist. He thinks and writes with sharp insight and honesty, while his prose is always clear and easy to grasp. His most famous and influential essay is right at this link: ‘Politics and the English Language’. Orwell says that Political Language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." He offers sage advice, that applies to every kind of writing. His salient bullet points:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
If you’ve already read Orwell’s two famous novels, and the aforementioned essay, then I recommend every other essay and review he wrote. Here’s a slice of Orwell’s life in Burma, balancing between the British Imperial Police, the locals looking to him for authority in an emergency, and his sympathy for the unlucky elephant trapped in the middle with him:
‘Shooting an Elephant’.
Orwell’s Road to Animal Farm
George Orwell spent decades honing his writer’s craft and his socialist awareness. In the ‘30s, Socialism and Communism were fashionable in England, especially among intellectuals and artists. The Russian Revolution —the uprising, liberation and solidarity of Soviet workers— was a romantic cause, that was idealized by the British Left. Stalin was in fact squeezing the U.S.S.R., killing his enemies and millions of innocents; but he was also working his propaganda hard, and few outside of the U.S.S.R. guessed at how vast and ruthless his crimes were. Those of the international Left who did have an inkling of Stalin’s horrors, mostly felt sympathy and loyalty towards the proletariat’s beleaguered struggle, so they kept their misgivings about Stalin to themselves.
Orwell grew disillusioned after he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He spent the first half of 1937 in Spain, where the fascist Franco was fighting against socialists and communists of various stripes. As Orwell soon discovered, there were raging divisions on the Left. Just when all the poor and oppressed should have banded together, Stalin-backed forces were bent on wiping out all the Trotsky sympathizers, who should have been their natural allies. Trotskyites were falsely accused of collaborating with Franco, and they were all being publicly executed, or simply disappeared. Orwell managed to escape this senseless purge to France, but most of his comrades were not so lucky.
When he returned to England, many didn’t want to believe or even hear about the treachery and slaughter Orwell had seen between different segments of the Left. "In Spain... and to some extent in England, anyone professing revolutionary Socialism (i.e. professing the things the Communist Party professed until a few years ago) is under suspicion of being a Trotskyist in the pay of Franco or Hitler... in England, in spite of the intense interest the Spanish war has aroused, there are very few people who have heard of the enormous struggle that is going on behind the Government lines. Of course, this is no accident. There has been a quite deliberate conspiracy to prevent the Spanish situation from being understood."
As his friend A.J. Ayer wrote in Part of My Life, in Orwell’s worldview Socialism was “primarily an instrument of justice. What he hated in contemporary politics, almost as much as the abuse of power, was the dishonesty and cynicism which allowed its evils to be veiled.” In 1984 and Animal Farm Orwell anatomizes human greed and treachery, but he is most astute in mapping the mechanics of deceit and emotional manipulation. He is chilling when he shows how people are made complicit in our own betrayal, how we can be taught to mistrust our own eyes, and to submit our wills to Big Brother or Comrade Napoleon’s diktats.
Orwell explained the genesis of
Animal Farm’s plot in his
preface to the Ukranian edition (written for readers who sympathized with the Soviet cause, but who also had seen Stalin’s crimes and failures up close):
Indeed, in my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated. And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement.
On my return from Spain I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages. However, the actual details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.
I proceeded to analyse Marx's theory from the animals' point of view. To them it was clear that the concept of a class struggle between humans was pure illusion, since whenever it was necessary to exploit animals, all humans united against them: the true struggle is between animals and humans. From this point of departure, it was not difficult to elaborate the story.
Orwell addressed his personal development, as a writer and as an awakened socialist, in the conclusion of his essay, ‘Why I Write’:
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 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, as I understand it. . . . What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. . . . The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.
Soviet History Told as an Aesop’s Fable
The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. Stylistically, it has the flatness and simplicity of a fable or a fairy story; but it has no moral framework, not even the twisted fairy-tale one where pretty people are generally good, and ugly people are villains. Benjamin the Donkey is the wisest animal here, and the most cynical (except for the vile pigs). His motto is: "Life will go on as it has always gone on—that is, badly."
I first read Animal Farm around the age of eleven. No doubt many subtleties of wit and psychology went over my head, but the story and characters are immediate, and I felt most of the horror and frustration that Orwell intended. However, I missed the Soviet allegory the plot is built on.
We start on the Manor Farm, owned and run by Mr. Jones, once a capable farmer, now turning to booze, neglecting his animals, and finally turning cruel — he stands for Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar. The Pigs and Dogs and Sheep are the clearest types of animals (and as such, inspired the songs on Pink Floyd’s Animals). There are also three horses, each drawn as an individual; a donkey, a goat, cows, hens, a cat and a raven. Many of the main characters are pigs. The first prize pig, the alpha-boar of the Manor Farm, is Old Major — he stands for a blend of Marx and Lenin. Old Major has a visionary dream that he shares with all the animals, “a dream of the earth as it will be when Man has vanished.” He foresees a world in which human oppressors are overthrown, and all animals live in solidarity, and comfort, and plenty. “Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep.” But he left the animals with their shared secret hope of liberation.
Eventually Mr. Jones goes too far, and the animals all rise up against him. The pigs are the smartest animals and also the pushiest. Two of them rise to leadership of the now renamed Animal Farm. Snowball is the cleverest and most inspiring pig, encouraging the animals to strive together, and always brainstorming ways they can improve the farm and their lives there — he is based on Leon Trotsky. His chief rival is Napoleon, "A large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way". Napoleon, the villain of the book, is a sort of adolescent Big Brother — based on Joseph Stalin. Other animals are also based on Soviets, but these are the few that you’re likely familiar with. The fourth most significant pig, Squealer, is Napoleon’s minister of propaganda — based on Vyacheslav Molotov.
Animal Farm is a powerful read, though it would be fairer to say it impressed me than that I enjoyed it. I often had to put it down, to take a break from all it made me feel. My biggest surprise was to find that these animals, who are often somewhat cartoonish, who Orwell rarely draws with subtlety and depth, evoked such visceral sympathy. Their betrayals and tragedies made me very sad, and angry.
When Orwell does give touches of personality, his hand is sure and true. His world holds together, it comes alive. He is wise and comprehends so much humanity, all the plot steps and digressions keep adding solidity to his tale.
Orwell achieved his mission in Animal Farm: “to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.” He found his full artistic voice, he saw a universal tale of humanity with all of its ideals and even more flaws, and he wrote this book so true that about a thousand editions of it have grabbed the hearts and minds of readers all around the world.
Never Trust a Pig
I wrote above that Orwell “is most astute in mapping the mechanics of deceit and emotional manipulation.” He grasps all the particular details of individual human lives, and also the many ways tyrannical state systems twist and squash that humanity into oblivion. Between writing
Animal Farm and
1984, Orwell grew more embittered. There are many lively moments in
Animal Farm, while
1984 is unremitting in its grimness. You can also see
Animal Farm as a tyranny finding its feet, while
1984 shows us a fascism that has already taken hold, and squeezed almost all humanity out of its citizens.
The way the lies and betrayals take over, step by step, is brilliantly drawn. Here, from early in the book, are some hints of how Animal Farm’s egalitarian ideals will gradually sour.
"Now, comrades," cried Snowball, throwing down the paint-brush, "to the hayfield! Let us make it a point of honour to get in the harvest more quickly than Jones and his men could do."
But at this moment the three cows, who had seemed uneasy for some time past, set up a loud lowing. They had not been milked for twenty-four hours, and their udders were almost bursting. After a little thought, the pigs sent for buckets and milked the cows fairly successfully, their trotters being well adapted to this task. Soon there were five buckets of frothing creamy milk at which many of the animals looked with considerable interest.
"What is going to happen to all that milk?" said someone.
"Jones used sometimes to mix some of it in our mash," said one of the hens.
"Never mind the milk, comrades!" cried Napoleon, placing himself in front of the buckets. "That will be attended to. The harvest is more important. Comrade Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few minutes. Forward, comrades! The hay is waiting."
So the animals trooped down to the hayfield to begin the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it was noticed that the milk had disappeared. . . .
The mystery of where the milk went to was soon cleared up. It was mixed every day into the pigs' mash. The early apples were now ripening, and the grass of the orchard was littered with windfalls. The animals had assumed as a matter of course that these would be shared out equally; one day, however, the order went forth that all the windfalls were to be collected and brought to the harness-room for the use of the pigs. At this some of the other animals murmured, but it was no use. All the pigs were in full agreement on this point, even Snowball and Napoleon. Squealer was sent to make the necessary explanations to the others.
"Comrades!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades," cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, "surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?"
Now if there was one thing that the animals were completely certain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to them in this light, they had no more to say. The importance of keeping the pigs in good health was all too obvious. So it was agreed without further argument that the milk and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened) should be reserved for the pigs alone.