George Orwell
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.
I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’, etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost —
So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.
which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
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. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
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. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes up again. 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. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
1946
THE END
____BD____
George Orwell: ‘Why I Write’
First published: Gangrel. — GB, London. — summer 1946.
- Reprinted:
- — ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’. — 1953.
- — ‘England Your England and Other Essays’. — 1953.
- — ‘The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage’ — 1956.
- — ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.
- — ‘Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays’. — 1965.
- — ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
19 comments:
‘The Orwellian heart that beats with the pangs of words, sentences, and compositions.’
D.H. Lawrence once said, “I like to write when I feel spiteful: it’s like having a good sneeze.” In trying to comprehend George Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’, it is a laudable attempt of making the reader understand that writing is an intrinsic part of the writer. It sheds light on the writer being introspective—the writing resides in this unconscious lapidary style, at times a litany of sentences that will all lead to this underlying mystery that will lure a fresh luminosity to the writer’s true motives. Orwell implicitly states that when a writer resides in his true nature—a nature affected by current dispositions and past experiences—the vividness of the literary art he produces resonates with an effortless lyricism. The literary life is a dignified plane of unconscious thought when not pursued by the lust of a lucrative career. As Orwell states, “All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.”
Unquestionably the literary reality of Orwell at the very beginning was filled with the dark opacity of not realizing his true callings, as Orwell states, “I was outraging my true nature.” To accomplish this plane of illuminative understanding and to reach the radiant realm where the altitude of conscious and unconscious thinking has no plausible explanation—is an epic journey on the rasp unsheltered seas of melancholic criticisms and hurdles. The rationale behind writing differs for every individual and according to Orwell one will reach “an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.” Orwell explicitly states his callings are to write novels with a lugubrious ending intertwined with the tendrils of a sententious understanding and words that are inseparable from the confines of the text—that spatial prison guarded by those infinite vertical and horizontal lines—the so called margins that smother the words with ineffable beauty.
Richard Brautigan once said, “I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word mayonnaise.” According to Orwell there are four definite motives that lure a writer to express the indispensable truth he contains. The four motives stated by Orwell are—Aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, political purpose, and sheer egoism. Orwell feels that ‘sheer egoism’ is the shared ideals of humanity that have accumulate throughout the centuries, as Orwell states, “the whole top crust of humanity.” It resonates at the depths of all conceived human aspirations. ‘Aesthetic enthusiasm’ captures the beauty of a literary piece of art. The atoms that create those words reside in this harmonic equilibrium where the collisions are purely elastic and are indigenous to the serenity of nature. As Orwell states, “Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.” ‘Historical impulse’ is to embark on the task of knitting together the sublime fundamental facts that chisel at the heart of our very universal identity and also has to be remembered for posterity. ‘Political impulse’ as Orwell states is the “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ ideas of the kind of society that they should strive after.” The writing will postulate a discussion that has haunted the mind of the author and writing about this revelation that could possibly, in a figurative sense, redeem the writer from the mental inferno he is trapped in and he can prevent the recrudescence of political disorder. As Orwell states, “Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows and the more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity.”
Approaching the heart of Orwell’s essay he states that he writes because he has to serve justice by shedding light on a universal lie that has enshrouded and deceived the masses with the help of a diabolic fictitious force. The rectification of this situation is helped by a liberal educated mind that will help stop the recurrence of these deadly concepts of total communism, imperialism, and totalitarianism which all reside in the beat frequency of oligarchy. As Orwell states, “One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
Writing requires a high intensity of analysis and thought. The state of being content will only be achieved if one is able to give a unique conception and understanding to the timeless contemporary classics of literary art. Orwell states, “One can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.” If one allows their outer personality to fade into the past, all they are left is with the framework of their inner soul, which allows them to rise to the highest altitude of contemplating and enquiry. Indubitable that this is the sphere of pure genius but one can never loose touch with their human instincts and the splendor of being human. As Michel De Montaigne once said, “All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.”
“A writer’s desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he’ll start by imitating whatever he’s read” (Northrop Frye).
George Orwell has had it in is head that when he becomes an adult, his occupation would be a writer. He also stated that he would try whatever he could to try and find a new hobby. However, as he got older, he realized that his expertise truly lied in the line of writing. Northrop Frye states that when one writes, he truly imitates another piece of literature and he writes based on past experiences. Orwell was the middle child of three and soon found himself feeling extremely lonely. This factored into his profession of writing because he found himself with a lot of time on his hands. This also impacted his writing because by being in this predicament, it gave him some ideas on how and what to write. Being isolated by his surroundings gave Orwell the sense of enlightenment and allowed him to use his imagination in a number of ways. By talking to his imaginary friends allowed Orwell to expand his imagination and horizon and use it to create a magnificent piece of work. Orwell uses the catastrophes around him, such as the war of 1914-18 and the death of Kitchener to write local newspaper clips which were published when he was only eleven years old.
Orwell did not only write because of school, but because he enjoyed doing so. He wrote different poems, plays and in relation to school he edited the school magazines. When Orwell was a child, he took on the role of various characters that he read in novels and pretended he was them. As he got older, he kept a diary where he would write down stories that he would create about his personal life and experiences. Orwell also states that he writes based on his past experience with different writers from what he read. As he wrote his stories, he would take characteristics from his writers and keep in mind their writing styles. He also states that he wants to write books about events that are happening at the same period in time. He states, “I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels” and he also goes into detail about how he wants it to end and the type of descriptions that should be found in it. He also talks about the type of mind that you need in order to become a good writer. Orwell writes because he feels that he has the right emotional attitude which is influential in order to become a writer. Another key point that Orwell mentions over time is that your past experience is a key factor that is what develops your mind and allows you to become an excellent writer. Being the middle child of three and feeling very lonely at some points made Orwell have the sense of writing because now he is going through all these emotional roller coasters which he would like to share with the outside world.
Orwell writes truly deep pieces of work based on true facts. For example, he talks about how he is fully against totalitarianism and that is one of the reasons why he can write strong pieces of work about that topic. Orwell also writes because he has something to prove or something to share with the rest of the world; compared to other writers who write because they feel that they can produce a masterpiece. He writes because when he has a strong opinion about something and he wants to share it with the rest of the world. He also states that in some of his work, he goes into a lot of detail which other politicians might find irrelevant. He writes because he wants to improve his writing style and he states that once he has done that, he feels as though he has outgrown it.
Orwell has the emotional capacity and is capable of producing strong pieces of work based on past experiences and information. He is able to focus on one topic and continue writing until he feels he has justified his reasons for why he wrote about this particular topic. By having all of that alone time when he was young changed his way of life and the way he thinks. He found himself with extra time and turned it into something worth doing. He started very young by formatting his brain into thinking when he would write his pieces of work and he put a lot of effort into them. As he wrote, he never thought about whether it would be a piece of art; but rather, has it proven what he has been trying to say.
From quite a young age, George Orwell was well aware that one of his purposes in life was to become a writer. Although he attempted to leave this idea behind as a young adult, he knew that he could simply not escape his fate: “…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.”
Born the middle child of three without the influence of a constantly present father-figure, Orwell’s feelings of isolation, deprivation and loneliness manifested themselves into imaginary friends and stories. “I knew that I had a facility with words and a power facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.” Orwell began to write a number of poems and short stories which received recognition from his community. In fact, his patriotic poem at the time of the 1914-1918 war was printed in the local newspaper. In addition to exercising his literary talents at school, he continued to write poems and rhyming plays, and took a significant role in the production of school magazines. Furthermore, over a time span of around fifteen years, Orwell worked on a continuous life story about himself, which acted like a ‘diary in his mind’, and enabled him to face his emotions from his childhood and adolescence.
Over the years, Orwell began to develop an emotional attitude and a sense of what he wanted to write, which became evident through his literary works. “I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which word were used partly for the sake of their own sound.” His first novel which he wrote at thirty years old entitled Burmese Days embodied this exact style of writing. Orwell believes that the motive for writing can be boiled down to four factors, aside from the necessity to earn a living. These factors exist in all writers, but the extent to which they exist depends on the writer’s environment and circumstances.
Sheer egoism is the desire to be remembered after death, which is a common characteristic with what Orwell refers to as “the whole top crust of humanity”. Aesthetic enthusiasm refers to the writer’s desire to share their opinions and beliefs which they feel could potentially have a significant effect on the reader. Historical impulse can be defined as putting actual facts out there for future generations to learn. Lastly, political purpose is the writer’s want to share their political views with others, with the goal of altering people’s ideologies or ultimately making a change in society.
It is quite evident that George Orwell’s life experiences allowed him to grow as a writer and produce literary works which exemplify the above four factors determining why one writes. His experience as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, his life as a man struck by poverty, and his presence during the Spanish War all contributed to his awareness of his political values, and ultimately his place in the world. “It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity.”
Orwell’s main objective as a writer is to “make political writing into an art”, and expose lies and facts which he feels the public ought to be aware of. Over the years he has come to realize that once a writer perfects their style, they have outgrown it. “And yet is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggle to efface one’s own personality.” Therefore, Orwell suggests that writing is a life-changing experience by which the writer evolves and develops as a human.
Inside the mind of Eric Arthur Blair
All people are born with special talents and traits. Some people are great athletes, others have a great understanding of mathematics, and some are computer whizzes. George Orwell, on the other hand, was born with the ability to write. Orwell has written much literature, most of which have been groundbreaking. Orwell has used his own life experiences as well as flaws he witnessed in society to put together fabulous pieces of writing. Orwell�s essay �Why I Write� gives insight on why Orwell does write. It is evident that Orwell�s own happenings and happenings in the real world led him to write all of his work.
It is often thought that certain traits cannot be taught. These gifts are ones which only God can give. George Orwell was lucky enough to be born with the talent of writing. From a young age Orwell discovered that writing was his gift. Orwell explained that he would often be �making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary person�. Orwell was often lonely as his siblings were too old and too young to understand. Orwell has a great imagination, one which could be transferred into writing. As Orwell grew older he then began writing poems and kept his own mental diary. In this �mental diary� he would pretend to be heroes such as Robin Hood, and it seemed as though his life turned into a piece of literature. As a teen, Orwell �discovered the joy of mere words�. It is clear that Orwell had a great fascination with literature, and it seemed as though he had found his gift. Orwell made it official that he wanted to write books, but the type of books he would write would be direct experiences he had.
Upon the discovery of his love for writing, Orwell had an idea of what he wanted to write about. Orwell explains �I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes�. Orwell also explained that the theme of the writing would be factored by the time it was written as well as past experience. It is quite possible that Orwell�s childhood was a considerable factor in the content of his writing. Orwell states that �if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write�. Orwell is conveying that the experience and ambitions previously picked up should be what drives someone to write. Orwell�s own writing focuses on politics, and the flaws in certain ideologies. Orwell asserts �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�. Great examples of this idea are Orwell�s novels �Animal Farm� and �Nineteen Eighty Four�. Animal Farm sheds light on the corruption in the Stalin era in Russia, while Nineteen Eighty Four focuses on a dystopia, like the one run by Hitler. Orwell stated that he wanted to turn �political writing into an art�, and by writing these novels was a step towards that. Orwell may have given a huge factor in regards to why he writes when he explained how he wrote to expose a flaw and draw attention to it. He wanted the world to see how horrible certain scenarios could be, like the ones outlined in his novels. Orwell wrote these because he wanted to ensure society would not end up like the way they would in his writings. Orwell did not write to get praise, he wrote because he loved to write, and to get his very realistic messages across.
Orwell was a great writer and it was clear that his works and motivation for writing came right from his childhood experiences and the events happening in society. Orwell�s God-given talent was given to him not by mistake, but in order to spread messages through literature. Orwell explains that there is a certain driving force that cannot be understood that makes someone write. Orwell�s views on society were ones that the world could agree on. Using his abilities, he was able to convey the messages that others could not. Orwell�s love for writing was what motivated him, and a dream to improve the world. It is humbling to know that one man�s love to write brought new ideas and thoughts to society. It is a shame that writers like Orwell only come around once in a while.
To understand why George Orwell wrote one would have to understand why any author puts pen to paper. Although, as Orwell states, all writers have different motives perhaps there is a subconscious motivation that unites them all. Orwell begins his essay with the confession that writing is his true nature and that he could not live a non-literary life. He began writing as any other author does, by drawing from his influences to create his own works. He then moved on to form his own ideas and express them through literature. As Northrop Frye has once said about a man who’s world falls apart because of lack of education “He’s beginning to realize that if he recognizes no other society except the one around him, he can never be anything more than a parasite on that society”. To transform the society we live in into the society we want to live in is the motive that every author possesses. True to Frye’s philosophy Orwell recognized a world inside of him that yearned for the kind of society he wanted to live in. He wrote to expose the lies of his own society, to transform the society around him and to hopefully, make it a better place.
Orwell grew up without a father and his boyhood emotions grew into strange anti-social behaviors. He mimicked poems by William Blake and even had a poem about the Great War published in a school newspaper. He did not take a serious literary stance until later on in his life. At high school he continued to write and edit for the school newspaper, this was to serve as the foundation for his literary career. In his essay Orwell admits that ever since his childhood he has been a part of a continuous story about himself that only exists in his own mind. He thoughts had a scrupulous descriptive quality that expressed his every move, in the way a good author would describe their protagonists actions. This ability stems from Orwell love for words, particularly for their sound and the way they fit together. From this is can be determined that Orwell’s life is ingrained with a different type of language, and it is this use of language that sets him apart from ordinary people. Descriptive language includes the use of metaphors and similes, which have the power to associate the human with the un-human world. Already as a teenager Orwell holds the makings of a true writer. As Orwell says “I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in…” The age that he lives in is one of war, totalitarianism, Stalinism and a whole variety of other injustices.
Orwell goes on to talk of the four main motives that drive a person to write. The first being egoism in which he describes that all writers have this quality to live for themselves. The last one being political purpose, where Orwell illustrates the very reason he writes. “Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.” Which goes back to Frye’s two worlds, the world we want and the world we have. After this Orwell writes of his experience as an officer of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma where he gained insight into the world of the working class. Orwell claims that he knew where he stood politically after the Spanish civil war “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. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.” This is Orwell’s most prominent motive for writing prose and it is evident in his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. For Orwell, Stalin and his politics striped humans of their humanity. He says he writes to expose lies and tell the truth, he does this best through works of prose. He was pushed and pulled by certain aspects of society and the injustice of the world made him angry. Orwell’s continuous descriptive thoughts articulated the world he wanted to live in. It was a subconscious desire to better the world that can only be expressed through writing. From working in Burma and examining communist Russia Orwell recognized other societies around him and this stopped him from being a parasite, as Frye says, on his own society. Through writing Orwell felt he had something to contribute to the world to make it a better place.
Northrop Frye writes of the two worlds that each human experiences: the world we live in and the world we want to live in. Literature is the expression of the latter. Orwell saw the world he lived in as a place full of political injustice and strife. Internally he strived to articulate the world of peace that he wanted through his writing.
Orwell’s Evolution
There are many reasons on why people write. Some people write so they can express their feelings; some using poetry while others use stories to show how they feel on certain events. Some people believe writers are born with a natural talent. Orwell summarizes four motives for writing as sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. As Orwell’s life experiences evolved; he began to expand his mind and writing into more complex ideas. Writing was Orwell’s way of expressing his thoughts.
As a child Orwell he knew that he wanted to be a writer. Orwell’s childhood was one of loneliness. He states “I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued”. Through the use of his imagination during his childhood, Orwell developed descriptive skills that he would later use in his literary work. Even as a young child during World War I, Orwell began using his literary talents to express his thoughts on society. Whether he was writing a patriotic poem or short stories; writing was a part of his life during his childhood. Throughout his childhood and early teenage years he acquired an ability to write easily and quickly however did not have joy in this work. His imagination continued to develop his own story with great descriptive quality. Although he was not writing continuously; his mind and imagination was his own diary. “For fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of quite a different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind”.
During his young adult life, Orwell found a new joy in writing. “When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words”. This was the time in his life where he had a vision for his future as a writer. As a young writer, Orwell identified with the first three motives for writing of sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm and historical impulse more strongly than the political purpose. Specifically, aesthetic enthusiasm was evident in his work. He describes this motive as “pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story”. Orwell demonstrates this motive as he states “I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound”.
As an adult his motives continued to evolve to include political purpose. “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 he has experienced the complexity of life during wars of the 1930’s and 1940’s, Orwell’s writing has also become more complex and focused. “I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly”. His words have become focused. “I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing”.
For Orwell, writing has been a journey of self discovery and evolution. At first, he fought the need to write and wanted to explore other opportunities. When he realized that he was destined to be a writer; he wrote with no joy and did not have a political purpose focus in his writing. As he grew older and gained more experience writing; he embraced writing as an opportunity to express his thoughts with political purpose. His journey of self discovery showed that political purpose was an important element of his evolution as a writer. “I see that it is invariably where I lacked political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally”.
To consider why George Orwell wrote, it must be understood that his progression in writing resembles any particular skill or talent possessed by any other person. Orwell’s writing ability began as an interest in expressing his opinions and ideas through writing, in which his works at an early age were typical and non-revealing about his true potential. Through subtle pieces, it became apparent to Orwell that he had a gift, “From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer.” Based on this realization, Orwell would further develop his interest and ability to write throughout his early years. Over the following years, up until he was a late teenager, Orwell wrote few pieces that contributed to his writing talent, however, glimpses of his talent showed themselves through Orwell’s impressive methods of description. It wasn’t until later on in Orwell’s life that he truly understood why he wrote. Through various life experiences, such as Orwell’s being a police officer in Burma and various wars, he was able to comprehend political problems with certain parts of the world.
Taking a stance against totalitarianism, Orwell used his knowledge and consequently, his contempt of totalitarian governments to help mold his writing. Eventually, every piece he wrote reflected his views, promoting democratic socialism and speaking out against totalitarianism. George Orwell now had meaning to his writing. He now had the ability to express his opinions and political views through an art that he was skilled in, writing.
A writer that has no reason to write a piece will fail; George Orwell wrote his works because he had an opinion on the matter, and he cared to express his feelings on the subject through writing. Orwell talks about his reasons behind writing Homage to Catalonia, of which were largely based on his opinion of false accusations. Without this opinion on the matter, Orwell would have no reason to create this story, “If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.” For any writer, the key to creating a piece of work that is realistic and meaningful is the interest in the subject manner, and also the ambition to clarify one’s opinion through a particular type of writing.
If the key to writing a piece of literature is one’s related opinion, then the next matter to discuss is one’s reasons for their opinion. Orwell – just as anyone else, grew up living by a certain standard of morals and beliefs, most likely outlined by his parents and teachers. It is through these life lessons and experiences that were taught to him that Orwell was able to form his opinions and beliefs about totalitarianism, among other political flaws. Growing up in a society that promoted equality and a general decent standard of living taught Orwell that oppression and inequality between man was a massive problem. If he had not learned these sets of beliefs in his early stages of life, it is quite possible that Orwell would never have taken such a strong political stance again the oppressive totalitarian governments that were present at the time of his realization.
George Orwell’s motives for writing stemmed from his opinions on political matters all over the world. Having grown up in a democratic environment, Orwell’s early life formed his beliefs about fair human treatment, and ultimately led him to create his opinions on political matters. His keen writing ability - realized at an early age, allowed Orwell the opportunity to express his political opinions through his writing, be it through poems, novels, or essays. The reason George Orwell wrote, was to express his feelings. He wrote because certain political issues, such as totalitarianism, were apparent in society, and he was not only concerned, but upset about them. His desire to convey his thoughts finally gave his burrowed gift of writing a chance to show itself. Through Orwell’s novels and other works, he was able to display his political views through a particular talent that he possessed.
“… I don’t think one can assess a writers motives without knowing something of his early development."
This quote straight from Orwell essay displays the main reason writers, write. Early development shapes who we are, and who we are going to be. Just as it shapes what a writer may write about. You are only able to write about what you know, what Orwell knew was loneliness and isolation. Due these circumstances he was forced to use his imagination to create a world separate from what he had, and was able to enter a world were he had what he wanted. By Orwell using his imagination he was able to create a world of his own separate from everyone else. “The sense of escape, or at least detachment, does come into everybody’s literary experience.” (Northrop Frye, the Educated Imagination)
As mentioned before we are only able to write about what we know. What George Orwell knew better than anyone else was himself. He says that he often found himself making a continuous ‘story’ about himself. Orwell says that he found himself doing this against his own will. Literature had become second nature to him.
Orwell speaks about the four motives for writing. Each of these motives can be linked to Orwell’s personal motives for writing.
1)Sheer egoism the first motive is the desire to appear clever, to be remembered after death. George Orwell states that he was unpopular throughout his school days. Therefore it is fair to say that George Orwell is using his desire to be recognized as a motive for writing.
2)Aesthetic Enthusiasm, the second motive. It is the desire to share an experience. Orwell may have had many important experiences in his childhood and early adult life that he was motivated to share through writing.
3)Historical Impulse the third motive. It is the desire to find out true facts and store them up prosperity. George Orwell in a very historical time period. He could be motivated the write about the events that were taking place and his personal experiences during these times.
4)Political Impulse the final motive. It is the desire to push the world in certain direction, to alter people’s ideas. It is fair to say that George Orwell had some political view and ideas that he wanted to share with the world. Especially considering the democratic time period that Orwell lived in, where he saw the Spanish Civil War and WWII.
Orwell states, “When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” This quote proves that Orwell main motivation to write is simply his love for it. It is the “demon” within him that drives and motivates him to write. It drives him to write about his personal experiences through childhood and adulthood, his political views, and his ideas. It drives him to write about what he knows.
In my opinion, I don’t believe it was Orwell’s will to write, rather, it feels as if writing was a curse he had to live with in order to get the attention and acceptance that he longed for. At an early age, Orwell never saw his father before the age of eight, which can be seen as an underlying cause to Orwell’s undeniable need for attention. Orwell described himself as a loner child, one who would talk to imaginary friends and make up stories. This loneliness and isolation may have triggered Orwell to write books and poems in order to achieve the much-needed attention that he was denied at a younger age. As an adolescent, Orwell wrote poems, books and a number of literary works that were extremely advanced for his age.
Adding on, I believe that Orwell writes because he feels he has an obligation to write. Orwell was never one of those cliché writers, the type who would say “writing is my passion” or “I live to write” if the question of why they write ever came up. Orwell writes not because he loves it, but rather to uncover hidden truths, and to expose the unexposed. The article gives off a type of vibe in which Orwell doesn’t love to write, but rather, feels that it is his obligation to write because he has been given this strange gift (or curse, depending on how he looks at it) of amazing literary skills.
One thing that Orwell holds common to nearly all writers of the past and present is that he writes in order to express himself. His childhood, his opinions, his past experiences are all embedded within every word and every letter that he writes. His feelings of loneliness and hopelessness, as well as his anti-totalitarian ideas are all interpreted in his novel 1984, currently being covered in class.
Whether Orwell writes for attention, as an obligation or merely as a way of expressing himself, there is no one who can take away the fact that Orwell is not only one of the most brilliant writers of all time, he may also be the most eccentric writers of all time too.
George Orwell, who is known for writing some of the most influential books in the history of literature. The essay that Orwell writes about why he writes is based upon him acquiring the initiative to write and about how he voices out his own words to the people of the world by using literature, George Orwell was a brilliant man who cared about the various things that were going on in the world and when he finally realised that he could try and make it a better place, he started voicing out his opinions to the public through his novels.
Everybody in this world writes. Some people write because the are made to do it , some people write in order to get their emotions onto a piece of paper and some people write for the sheer pleasure of writing. George Orwell was one of those people who wrote because he loved doing so. In his child-hood days, he was fond of it and slowly his desire to write and to better himself grew and then he decided to write novels that would actually mean something. Orwell had a great imagination , as you can see in his work , and with his brilliant imagination and the different issues that were going on in the world at that point of time , he merged them into his novels which created works of excellence. Orwell published the truth about the world that we live in. Some people did not like his work because they thought that he was too politically involved because after-all , most of his writing was focused on politics.
Orwell was a great writer and without his four main motives , he may not have been able to be so.
His first motive was Sheer Egoism. As I understand it , Orwell wanted to be one of the best writers in the world , this motive suggested that he wanted to be remembered and recognised all around the world through his literary works. This is a motive that every writer has in them. In my opinion I think this motive is the most important one out of all.
His second motive was AESTHETIC ENTHUSIASM. THIS MOTIVE SPEAKS FOR ITSELF, THE WRITING SHOULD HAVE A SWEET RHYTHM TO IT AS IF THERE IS NOTHING CAN GO WRONG AND A LITERARY WORK WHICH GIVES OUT A POSITIVE VIBE. NOT MANY WRITERS POSSESS THIS MOTIVE.
HIS THIRD MOTIVE WAS HISTORICAL IMPULSE , WHICH MEANS THAT READING SOMETHING WHICH HAS A SIGNIFICANT MEANING TO IT AND ALWAYS HAVING A GOOD PLACE FOR IT.
HIS LAST AND FINAL MOTIVE WAS POLITICAL PURPOSE , WHICH SIMPLY MEANS THAT ANY CERTAIN LITERARY WORK SHOULD HAVE A POLITICAL PURPOSE AND IT SHOULD GIVE THE PEOPLE AN IDEA ABOUT THE WORLD THAT THEY LIVE IN AND CHANGE THEIR MINDSET ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT OR OTHER THINGS. NO BOOK IS GENUINELY FREE FROM POLITICAL BIAS.
THOSE FOUR MOTIVES WERE ALL THAT INSPIRED ORWELL OR GOT HIM TO WRITE GREAT NOVELS. ORWELL HAS THEREFORE ACCOMPLISHED MAKING POLITICS INTO WORKS OF ART
The Cyclical Educated Process
“Commit the following to memory, "Writing is a cyclical process””. Prior to this blog we had to understand our own writing; what we write about, how we proceed to write, expanding our vocabulary, etc, etc. I responded in my blog that our writing helps develop who we are and allows people to learn about ourselves and our ideas that we share. To this day I believe that my response is correct but that doesn’t mean I can’t expand this statement further on because this too is a cyclical process. With that in mind, understanding any considerations toward the reasoning why Eric Arthur Blair wrote and how he wrote is familiar to the understanding of our own writing.
George Orwell, the pen name for Eric Arthur Blair, wrote an essay describing his reasoning for his writing ability. He begins his essay by expressing his early childhood years where felt lonely and isolated from the world he lives in. These feelings that he has are the feelings that “he will never completely escape” and are the seeds that plant a taste in his writing. In that same introduction he writes “I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life”. This claim that he makes is the backbone part of his enlightenment because he is in a state of belief that he has the power to face unpleasant facts which carry on to form his commentating towards politics. To further explain George Orwell’s motives, “your imagination couldn’t operate on such a world except in terms of the world you know” (Frye, Educated Imagination, pg 18), without that feeling in his early childhood he would not of had that imaginative uniqueness to write the art he wrote.
With George having his own imaginative world he knows and the feelings he experiences in his early stages he then can express his feelings through the language he writes in. This is George Orwell’s motive for writing the art he wrote, “I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound”, that view in writing his art and how he is going to proceed in writing them is the foundation block that is waiting to be connected to other expandable blocks that he learns throughout his life. George strengthens this point when he says, “I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience”, through his gift in facing unpleasant facts such as the Spanish war, WW2 and events in 1936-37; he then has the ability in recognizing the lies someone small or something big is proclaiming to the world he lives in, “literature not only leads us toward the regaining of identity, but it also separates this state from its opposite, the world we don’t like and want to get away from” (Frye, Educated Imagination, pg 31). This gives George Orwell his own identity in being a political activist.
With George finding his identity through his life experiences he then can place his educated imaginative thoughts down in a conventionalized manner; where his readers can understand his imaginative thoughts on this world, “he wants to feel he has some function, something to contribute to the world, something that would make the world poorer if he weren’t in it” (Frye, Educated Imagination, pg 94). As George states, “One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand”, this was his drive to understand something as much as he possibly can and gifted in proceeding through it then to share his imaginative world amongst the next person so they too can go through this same cyclical process.
George Orwell wrote an essay about why he writes; the reason for this essay was not only for the reader to understand his background experiences in his lifetime which helped influence him towards his political writing but also to understand yourself and help you realize and recognize your own identity, the world you understand, then hopefully you have educated yourself well enough to express your own imagination written down on paper and assist others to find their own uniqueness just how Orwell and many other imaginative authors before him have done.
The Motive for Writing
The man known for his famous fiction “Nineteen Eighty Four” displays a great gift for expressing ideas with fluency and eloquence in this novella long with other works of literature. The writer with such beauty seen in his literary works and words used in expressing his ideas has not always been present since the beginning of his early works.
Ever since childhood Orwell has had the experience and practice of placing his ideas down on paper, starting at the age of six. An isolated child aroused from hardly seeing his father before the age of eight and this lead to the usual behaviour of speaking with imaginary friends and false stories. Influenced by William Blake’s poem The Tiger and Aristophanes style of rhyming, amateur poems were the first products on the subjects of insignificant feelings and other descriptive literary works about himself of himself.
George Orwell mentions the fact that the influences imbedded since childhood have a lot to do with the topics writers choose to create literary works about but also that four main reasons for writing are evident in every writer, even if in small amounts. The first three answer the question as to why Orwell writes overall.
The first reason according to Orwell is the desire to known as a clever writer. This selfish motive can be found in the professions of science, art, politics and successful business men but does not remain after the age of 30. This is a reason seen mostly in writers with experience, wanting to be known for the smart choice of words as appose to a status of wealth. The second reason Orwell describes is a desire of seeing beautiful phrases used with descriptive words that create a speech of eloquence. The third reason is a desire to discover important facts for the good of generations to come. Lastly, Orwell mentions a desire to have an influence on the mindset of people and the direction in which they are headed.
Orwell’s motive or writing derives from his childhood influences and exposures, along with his surrounding environment and the first three reasons mentioned. A last influence on the writing of George Orwell comes from undeveloped speech ever since childhood. Writing is his way of developing his speech.
The Man Behind the Books
Having created two outstanding novels for their times, one of which our class has read this semester, we finally are introduced to the man behind the books. In his essay of ‘Why I Write’, George Orwell reveals the reasons and the factors that have shaped him into becoming one of the best writers of his time.
We take a step back into history, entering the life of George Orwell. His family life was not the greatest- being a middle child, isolation and loneliness were his two best friends. Although his negativity was driven outwards causing others to dislike his unpleasant attitude by these reasons, something inside him was awakened- his imagination. As a young child, his need to escape became early signs for his potential to become a writer appeared: his joy of making up stories, conversing with imaginary people, as well as his interest and ability to form the symphony of words.
More signs continued to appear as he progressed to his teenage years from poems and plays to editing magazines. He became more consistently exposed to different forms of literature whether it was made by him or by others. With each stroke of his pen, the words simply took over him, an unconsciousness striving to express itself, leaving Orwell with no other choice but to let them flow out of him involuntarily. It did not matter if his works were unserious, the point was, it helped him develop his amazing writing skills that we know of today. But of course, it is not only through writing that a writer is made, it is through reading as well. Orwell’s fondness of literature did not stop during his teenage years to young adulthood. Through his constant reading, his skills became more developed by being aware of grammar, or structures, and soon enough reading the works of other authors allowed him find a sense of his own style for writing. His passion for words as a child continued to envelop his being as he matured. He found his sense of belonging through his ability to bring harmony to words. His desire to meticulously describe things and beautifully string together words not only brought his works to life, but it brought him to life as well.
His essay continued on to reveal his motives for writing. The first is because of sheer egoism. As early as six, he already knew deep down in his heart that it is through writing that he will find his greatness. Similarly, humanity desires to be praised or have something that will allow them to belittle other people. It is in our nature and Orwell points this out as his motive for writing. The second one he mentions is aesthetic enthusiasm. Throughout his life, he had always found beauty in writing itself from its syllables, sounds, and structure as they create a masterpiece. His artistic and creative personality is shown through this motive. The third is because of historical impulse. As humans, we are called to be curious and this curiosity powers our unending quest to seek for the truth of things and Orwell’s thirst for the truth comes out in the words that he write. And the final motive that he states is political purpose. His desire to persuade other to changing their views on society as well as bringing awareness to the horrors of reality in a more subtle and creative way completes the essence of his motives for writing.
It was through life experiences that he realized what he truly wanted to do. Then it took a few more to realize what he wanted write about. The wars and injustices of the governments in different countries drove him to want a change in the world and his attempt to make a difference was through writing. Orwell wanted to merge the exposure of lies and voice out the truth with the craft of literature. He served his purpose justice through his novels of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four and as we step out of Orwell’s life, we should finally understand the reason behind writing.
The Orwellian Motives for Writing
The simple act of writing, putting ideas and thoughts down on paper, began for visionary novelist George Orwell the same way many people develop a writing ability; as a simple childhood activity. What would initially be a love for the sound and beauty of simple, effective poetry would later turn into social commentary with political undertones, Orwell’s essay Why I Write acknowledges his early development, the world he lived in, and the importance of politically just writing as being integral parts of his works.
Throughout his youth, he developed his skill by making small poems and stories as a child, later stemming into a never ending record sounding narration throughout his daily life. “This descriptive effort almost against my will” Orwell writes, “…reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.” The writer’s voice was constantly being in development for Orwell; the mere thought of describing the world around him without necessarily having to write it down was a testament to its influence, refinement, and maturity over time. It was a skill rigorously put to use, and it is later shown in his career as a writer.
All writers’ subject matter, Orwell says, “will be determined by the age he lives in”. Orwell grew up in a time where the greater part of the world was in a state of turmoil, war, and grief. His writing reflects that. Like all writers, their works are always influenced by whence they came from, based on their respective era and country. Their writing does not stem from their life’s circumstances, but it does not escape it; it is as integrated into the writing as whose writing it. It is, of course, true that all writing from a specific era, say the 1940s, is not about World War II, but that is not to say it is completely separate from it, either. Orwell says that if a writer does not thrive in the world they come from, “he will have killed his impulse to write”.
Orwell’s desire to write is driven by four motives; egoism, the desire to perceive beauty, the desire to see things for their truths, and the desire to push the world in a certain direction. His last desire to write is no doubt prominently displayed in his last novel Nineteen Eighty-four, which deals primarily with the complete opposite way the world should be heading towards. Orwell as a writer is not just trying to tell a story; he is literally commentating on the present world he lives in through the use of metaphors, symbols, and prose. He says “I write because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention”, not for the sake of creating an artistic piece.
He uses a book he wrote called Homage to Catalonia, which deals with the Spanish civil war, as an example. It was primarily a story, but a certain chapter filled with newspaper articles on outrageous political actions covered up “turned what might have been a good book into journalism”. Orwell recognized this while writing the book, yet the chapter remained. His reasoning was the simple fact that his research and findings uncovered many injustices, and his entire motivation to write the book was solely because he wanted this information to be known.
Political writing gives an entirely new and important meaning to his works, and Orwell said “where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally”. His reason to write is to better the world around him, a noble and truly good cause to write.
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