orwell critical essays

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The Orwell Foundation is delighted to make available a selection of essays, articles, sketches, reviews and scripts written by Orwell.

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of  the Orwell Estate . All queries regarding rights should be addressed to the Estate’s representatives at A. M. Heath literary agency.

The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity – please consider  making a donation to help us maintain these resources for readers everywhere.

Sketches For Burmese Days

• 1. John Flory – My Epitaph
• 2. Extract, Preliminary to Autobiography
• 3. Extract, the Autobiography of John Flory
• 4. An Incident in Rangoon
• 5. Extract, A Rebuke to the Author, John Flory

Essays and articles

• A Day in the Life of a Tramp ( Le Progrès Civique , 1929)
• A Hanging ( The Adelphi , 1931)
• A Nice Cup of Tea ( Evening Standard , 1946)
• Antisemitism in Britain ( Contemporary Jewish Record , 1945)
• Arthur Koestler (written 1944)
• British Cookery (unpublished, 1946)
• Can Socialists be Happy? (as John Freeman, Tribune , 1943)
• Common Lodging Houses ( New Statesman , 3 September 1932)
• Confessions of a Book Reviewer ( Tribune , 1946)
• “For what am I fighting?” ( New Statesman , 4 January 1941)
• Freedom and Happiness – Review of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin ( Tribune , 1946)
• Freedom of the Park ( Tribune , 1945)
• Future of a Ruined Germany ( The Observer , 1945)
• Good Bad Books ( Tribune , 1945)
• In Defence of English Cooking ( Evening Standard , 1945)
• In Front of Your Nose ( Tribune , 1946)
• Just Junk – But Who Could Resist It? ( Evening Standard , 1946)
• My Country Right or Left ( Folios of New Writing , 1940)
• Nonsense Poetry ( Tribune , 1945)
• Notes on Nationalism ( Polemic , October 1945)
• Pleasure Spots ( Tribune , January 1946)
• Poetry and the microphone ( The New Saxon Pamphlet , 1945)
• Politics and the English Language ( Horizon , 1946)
• Politics vs. Literature: An examination of Gulliver’s Travels ( Polemic , 1946)
• Reflections on Gandhi ( Partisan Review , 1949)
• Rudyard Kipling ( Horizon , 1942)
• Second Thoughts on James Burnham ( Polemic , 1946)
• Shooting an Elephant ( New Writing , 1936)
• Some Thoughts on the Common Toad ( Tribune , 1946)
• Spilling the Spanish Beans ( New English Weekly , 29 July and 2 September 1937)
• The Art of Donald McGill ( Horizon , 1941)
• The Moon Under Water ( Evening Standard , 1946)
• The Prevention of Literature ( Polemic , 1946)
• The Proletarian Writer (BBC Home Service and The Listener , 1940)
• The Spike ( Adelphi , 1931)
• The Sporting Spirit ( Tribune , 1945)
• Why I Write ( Gangrel , 1946)
• You and the Atom Bomb ( Tribune , 1945)

Reviews by Orwell

• Anonymous Review of Burmese Interlude by C. V. Warren ( The Listener , 1938)
• Anonymous Review of Trials in Burma by Maurice Collis ( The Listener , 1938)
• Review of The Pub and the People by Mass-Observation ( The Listener , 1943)

Letters and other material

• BBC Archive: George Orwell
• Free will (a one act drama, written 1920)
• George Orwell to Steven Runciman (August 1920)
• George Orwell to Victor Gollancz (9 May 1937)
• George Orwell to Frederic Warburg (22 October 1948, Letters of Note)
• ‘Three parties that mattered’: extract from Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Voice – a magazine programme , episode 6 (BBC Indian Service, 1942)
• Your Questions Answered: Wigan Pier (BBC Overseas Service)
• The Freedom of the Press: proposed preface to Animal Farm (1945, first published 1972)
• Preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm  (March 1947)

External links are being provided for informational purposes only; they do not constitute an endorsement or an approval by The Orwell Foundation of any of the products, services or opinions of the corporation or organisation or individual. The Foundation bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external site or for that of subsequent links. Contact the external site for answers to questions regarding its content.

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George Orwell

Critical essays.

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Best known for novels 1984 and Animal Farm , Orwell was also a superb essayist, and these two fine collections display his breadth of topic and depth of skill... Unpretentious, intelligent, compassionate and brilliantly insightful

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Critical Essays Paperback – International Edition, August 11, 2009

• Print length 416 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harvill Secker
• Publication date August 11, 2009
• Dimensions 6 x 1.06 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 9781846553264
• ISBN-13 978-1846553264
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Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1846553261
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvill Secker (August 11, 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781846553264
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846553264
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.19 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.06 x 9.25 inches
• #44,077 in Literary Movements & Periods

About the author

George orwell.

George Orwell is one of England's most famous writers and social commentators. Among his works are the classic political satire Animal Farm and the dystopian nightmare vision Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell was also a prolific essayist, and it is for these works that he was perhaps best known during his lifetime. They include Why I Write and Politics and the English Language. His writing is at once insightful, poignant and entertaining, and continues to be read widely all over the world.

Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The family moved to England in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel, Burmese Days (1934). Several years of poverty followed. He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals. Down and Out in Paris and London was published in 1933. In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to visit areas of mass unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) is a powerful description of the poverty he saw there.

At the end of 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight for the Republicans and was wounded. Homage to Catalonia is his account of the civil war. He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit. He spent six months in Morocco and there wrote Coming Up for Air. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943. As literary editor of the Tribune he contributed a regular page of political and literary commentary, and he also wrote for the Observer and later for the Manchester Evening News. His unique political allegory, Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame.

It was around this time that Orwell's unique political allegory Animal Farm (1945) was published. The novel is recognised as a classic of modern political satire and is simultaneously an engaging story and convincing allegory. It was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which finally brought him world-wide fame. Nineteen Eighty-Four's ominous depiction of a repressive, totalitarian regime shocked contemporary readers, but ensures that the book remains perhaps the preeminent dystopian novel of modern literature.

Orwell's fiercely moral writing has consistently struck a chord with each passing generation. The intense honesty and insight of his essays and non-fiction made Orwell one of the foremost social commentators of his age. Added to this, his ability to construct elaborately imaginative fictional worlds, which he imbued with this acute sense of morality, has undoubtedly assured his contemporary and future relevance.

George Orwell died in London in January 1950.

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George Orwell - All Art is Propaganda : Critical Essays

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A Critical Analysis of George Orwell's 'A Hanging'

BBC/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

This assignment offers guidelines on how to compose a  critical analysis of "A Hanging," a classic narrative essay by George Orwell.

Preparation

Carefully read George Orwell's narrative essay "A Hanging." Then, to test your understanding of the essay, take our multiple-choice reading quiz . (When you're done, be sure to compare your answers with those that follow the quiz.) Finally, re read Orwell's essay, jotting down any thoughts or questions that come to mind.

Composition

Following the guidelines below, compose a soundly supported critical essay of about 500 to 600 words on George Orwell's essay "A Hanging."

First, consider this brief commentary on the purpose of Orwell's essay:

"A Hanging" is not a polemical work. Orwell's essay is intended to express by example "what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man." The reader never finds out what crime was committed by the condemned man, and the narrative isn't primarily concerned with providing an abstract argument regarding the death penalty. Instead, through action, description , and dialogue , Orwell focuses on a single event that illustrates "the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide."

Now, with this observation in mind (an observation that you should feel free to either agree with or disagree with), identify, illustrate, and discuss the key elements in Orwell's essay that contribute to its dominant theme .

Keep in mind that you're composing your critical analysis for someone who has already read "A Hanging." That means you don't need to summarize the essay. Be sure, however, to support all your observations with specific references to Orwell's text. As a general rule, keep quotations brief. Never drop a quotation into your paper without commenting on the significance of that quotation.

To develop material for your body paragraphs , draw on your reading notes and on points suggested by the multiple-choice quiz questions. Consider, in particular, the importance of point of view , setting , and the roles served by particular characters (or character types).

Revision and Editing

After completing a first or second draft , rewrite your composition. Be sure to read your work aloud when you revise , edit , and proofread . You may hear problems in your writing that you can't see.

• Compose a Narrative Essay or Personal Statement
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• Reading Quiz on "A Hanging" by George Orwell
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• Plain Style in Prose
• Definition and Examples of Analysis in Composition
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What Orwell Really Feared

In 1946, the author repaired to the remote Isle of Jura and wrote his masterpiece, 1984 . What was he looking for?

The Isle of Jura is a patchwork of bogs and moorland laid across a quartzite slab in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. Nearly 400 miles from London, rain-lashed, more deer than people: All the reasons not to move there were the reasons George Orwell moved there. Directions to houseguests ran several paragraphs and could include a plane, trains, taxis, a ferry, another ferry, then miles and miles on foot down a decrepit, often impassable rural lane. It’s safe to say the man wanted to get away. From what?

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Orwell himself could be sentimental about his longing to escape (“Thinking always of my island in the Hebrides,” he’d once written in his wartime diary) or wonderfully blunt. In the aftermath of Hiroshima, he wrote to a friend:

This stupid war is coming off in abt 10–20 years, & this country will be blown off the map whatever else happens. The only hope is to have a home with a few animals in some place not worth a bomb.

It helps also to remember Orwell’s immediate state of mind when he finally fully moved to Jura, in May 1946. Four months before Hiroshima, his wife, Eileen, had died; shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped, Animal Farm was published.

From the March 1947 issue: George Orwell’s ‘The Prevention of Literature’

Almost at once, in other words, Orwell became a widower, terrified by the coming postwar reality, and famous—the latter a condition he seems to have regarded as nothing but a bother. His newfound sense of dread was only adding to one he’d felt since 1943, when news of the Tehran Conference broke. The meeting had been ominous to Orwell: It placed in his head the idea of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin divvying up the postwar world, leading to a global triopoly of super-states. The man can be forgiven for pouring every ounce of his grief, self-pity, paranoia (literary lore had it that he thought Stalin might have an ice pick with his name on it), and embittered egoism into the predicament of his latest protagonist, Winston Smith.

Unsurprisingly, given that it culminated in both his masterpiece and his death, Orwell’s time on the island has been picked over by biographers, but Orwell’s Island: George, Jura and 1984 , by Les Wilson, treats it as a subject worthy of stand-alone attention. The book is at odds with our sense of Orwell as an intrepid journalist. It is a portrait of a man jealously guarding his sense of himself as a creature elementally apart, even as he depicts the horrors of a world in which the human capacity for apartness is being hunted down and destroyed.

Wilson is a former political journalist, not a critic, who lives on neighboring Islay, famous for its whiskeys. He is at pains to show how Orwell, on Jura, overcame one of his laziest prejudices: The author went from taking every opportunity to laugh at the Scots for their “burns, braes, kilts, sporrans, claymores, bagpipes” (who is better at the derisive list than Orwell?) to complaining about the relative lack of Gaelic-language radio programming.

Scottish had come to mean something more to him than kailyard kitsch. These were a people holding out against a fully amalgamated identity, beginning with the Kingdom of Great Britain and extending to modernity itself. On Jura at least, crofters and fishermen still lived at a village scale. As to whether Jura represented, as has been suggested, suicide by other means—Orwell was chronically ill, and Barnhill, his cottage, was 25 miles from the island’s one doctor—Wilson brushes this aside. In fact, he argues that Jura was “kinder to Orwell’s ravaged lungs than smog-smothered London,” where inhabitants were burning scavenged wood to stay warm.

At Barnhill, Orwell set up almost a society in miniature, devoting his 16-acre homestead to his ideal of self-sufficiency. Soon after moving there, he was joined by his sister, his 2-year-old adopted son, and a nanny. Amid the general, often biting, austerity of postwar Europe, they enjoyed a private cornucopia, subsisting on, as Wilson says, a diet of “fish, lobster, rabbit, venison and fresh milk and eggs,” and were often warmed by peat that Orwell himself had cut. He intended to live there for the rest of his life, raising his son and relishing an existence as a non-cog in a noncapitalist machine.

From the July 2019 issue: Doublethink is stronger than Orwell imagined

He lived without electricity or phone; shot rabbits “for the pot,” as Wilson says; raised geese to be slaughtered and plucked; and fished the surrounding waters in a dinghy. He fashioned a tobacco pouch from animal skin and a mustard spoon out of deer bone, and served his aghast guests a seaweed blancmange. Over time, absconding to Jura and writing 1984 became aspects of a single premonition: a coming world of perpetual engulfment by the forces of bigness. As Orwell’s latest biographer, D. J. Taylor, has pointed out in Orwell: The New Life , Orwell’s novels before Animal Farm followed a common template of a sensitive young person going up against a heartless society, destined to lose. Eileen is the one who helped him—either by suggesting that Animal Farm be told as a fable or by lightening his touch, depending on whom you talk to—find a newly engaging, even playful (in its way), register.

The loss of Eileen and return of the self-pitying Orwell alter ego are certainly linked. And indeed, in 1984 he produces his most Orwellian novel, in both senses—only now both protagonist and situation are presented in the absolute extreme   : The young man is the bearer (if we believe his tormentor, O’Brien) of the last shred of human autonomy, in a society both totally corrupt and laying total claim to his being.

What this absolutism produced, of course, was not another fusty neo-Edwardian novel à la Orwell’s earlier Keep the Aspidistra Flying , but a wild, aggrieved tour de force of dystopian erotica. Odd though it may sound, given the novel’s unremitting torments, 1984 quickly became a best seller, in no small part because its first readers, especially in America, found it comforting—a source of the release you might feel, in a darkened theater, when you remember that you yourself are not being chased by a man with a chain saw. The reader could glance up, notice no limitless police powers or kangaroo inquisitions, and say: We are not them .

Such complacency is hard to come by in 2024. Thinking of Orwell, famous though he is for his windowpane prose and the prescience of his essays, as the ultimate sane human being is not so easy either. Rereading 1984 in light of the Jura episode suggests that Orwell was an altogether weirder person, and his last novel an altogether weirder book, than we’ve appreciated.

Conventionally speaking, 1984 is not a good novel; it couldn’t be. Novels are about the conflict between an individual’s inner-generated aims and a prevailing social reality that denies or thwarts them. 1984 is the depiction of the collapse of this paradigm—the collapse of inner and outer in all possible iterations. Of course its protagonist is thinly drawn: Winston’s self lacks a social landscape to give it dimensionality.

In place of anything like a novel proper, we get a would-be bildungsroman breaking through to the surface in disparate fragments. These scraps are Winston’s yearnings, memories, sensual instincts, which have, as yet, somehow gone unmurdered by the regime. The entire state-sponsored enterprise of Pavlovian sadism in Oceania is devoted to snuffing out this remnant interiority.

The facsimile of a life that Winston does enact comes courtesy of a series of private spaces—a derelict church, a clearing in the woods, a room above a junk shop—the last of which is revealed to have been a regime-staged contrivance. The inexorable momentum of the novel is toward the final such private space, Winston’s last line of defense, and the last line of defense in any totalitarian society: the hidden compartment of his mind.

When all else fails, there is the inaccessibility of human mentality to others, a black box in every respect. Uncoincidentally, Winston’s final defense—hiding out in his head—had been Orwell’s first. While he struggled on Jura to finish 1984 , Orwell apparently returned to “Such, Such Were the Joys,” his long and excoriating essay about his miserable years at St. Cyprian’s boarding school. He’d been sent there at the age of 8, one of the shabby-genteel boys with brains in what was otherwise a class snob’s paradise. He was a bed wetter to boot, for which, Orwell writes, he was brutally punished. No wonder he found dignity in apartness. Taylor’s biography is brilliant about the connection between Orwell’s childhood reminiscence and 1984 .

In the essay, Orwell portrays his alma mater as an environment that invaded every cranny of its pupils’ lives. Against this, he formed his sense of bearing “at the middle of one’s heart,” as he writes, “an incorruptible inner self” holding out against an autocratic headmistress. As a cop in Burma, a scullion in Paris, an amateur ethnographer in northern England, he was a man who kept his own company, even when in company, and whom others, as a consequence, found by and large inscrutable.

What was this man’s genius, if not taking the petty anxieties of Eric Blair, his given name, and converting them into the moral clarity of George Orwell? Fearful that his own cherished apartness was being co-opted into nonexistence, he projected his fear for himself onto something he called the “autonomous individual,” who, as he said in his 1940 essay “Inside the Whale,” “is going to be stamped out of existence.” To this he added:

The literature of liberalism is coming to an end and the literature of totalitarianism has not yet appeared and is barely imaginable. As for the writer, he is sitting on a melting iceberg; he is merely an anachronism, a hangover from the bourgeois age, as surely doomed as the hippopotamus.

The fate of the autonomous individual, “the writer,” the literature of liberalism—he carried all of it to Jura, where he dumped it onto the head of poor Winston Smith.

Orwell typed for hours upstairs, sitting on his iron bedstead in a tatty dressing gown, chain-smoking shag tobacco. In May 1947, he felt he had a third of a draft, and in November, a completed one. In December, he was in a hospital outside Glasgow, diagnosed with “chronic” tuberculosis—not a death sentence, maybe, but his landlord on Jura suspected that Orwell now knew he was dying.

The following July, after grueling treatments and a stint in a sanatorium, he returned to Jura fitter but by no means cured, and under strict orders to take it easy. His rough draft, however, was a riot of scrawled-over pages. To produce a clean manuscript for the publisher, he would need to hire and closely supervise a typist, but no candidate was willing to trek to Jura, and Orwell was unwilling to leave it. He typed 1984 on his own, having all but spent himself writing it.

“He should have been in bed,” Wilson says, and instead sat “propped up on a sofa” banging out 5,000 words a day. Among all of its gruesome set pieces, culminating in Room 101 in the Ministry of Love, the novel’s most decisive act of torment is a simple glance in the mirror. Winston is sure—it is one of his last consolations, before breaking completely—that some inherent principle exists in the universe to prevent a system based on nothing but cruelty and self-perpetuation from triumphing forever. O’Brien calmly assures Winston that he’s wrong, that he is “the last man,” and to prove it, and the obvious nonexistence of “the human spirit,” he forces Winston to look at himself:

A bowed, greycoloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him. Its actual appearance was frightening, and not merely the fact that he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to the glass. The creature’s face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird’s face with a nobby forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and battered-looking cheekbones above which his eyes were fierce and watchful. The cheeks were seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in look. Certainly it was his own face, but it seemed to him that it had changed more than he had changed inside. The emotions it registered would be different from the ones he felt.

The final membrane between inner and outer is dissolving. 1984 can read like Orwell’s reverse autobiography, in which, rather than a life being built up, it gets disassembled down to its foundational unit. The body is now wasting; the voice is losing expressive competence. Worse, the face will soon enough have nothing left to express, as the last of his adaptive neurocircuitry becomes property of Oceania.

1984 is Orwell saying goodbye to himself, and an improbably convincing portrait of the erasure of the autonomous individual. He finished typing the novel by early December 1948. His final diary entry on Jura—dated that Christmas Eve—gave the weight of the Christmas goose “before drawing & plucking,” then concluded: “Snowdrops up all over the place. A few tulips showing. Some wall-flowers still trying to flower.” The next month, he was back in a sanatorium; the next year, he was dead. He was 46 years old.

1 984 was published 75 years ago. Surprisingly, it immediately surpassed Animal Farm as a critical and commercial success. One by one, Orwell’s contemporaries—V. S. Pritchett, Rebecca West, Bertrand Russell—acknowledged its triumph. A rare dissenter was Evelyn Waugh, who wrote to Orwell to say that he’d found the book morally inert. “You deny the soul’s existence (at least Winston does) and can only contrast matter with reason & will.” The trials of its protagonist consequently failed to make Waugh’s “flesh creep.” What, he implied, was at stake here?

Talk about missing the point. Nowhere in Orwell’s work can one find evidence of anything essential, much less eternal, that makes us human. That’s why Winston, our meager proxy, is available for a thoroughgoing reboot. As the book implies, we’re creatures of contingency all the way down. Even a memory of a memory of freedom, autonomy, self-making, consciousness, and agency—in a word, of ourselves—can disappear, until no loss is felt whatsoever. Hence the terror of being “the last man”: You’re the living terminus, the lone bearer of what will be, soon enough, a dead language.

A precious language, indicating a way of being in the world worth keeping—if you’re George Orwell. From the evidence of Jura and 1984 , persisting as his own catawampus self—askew to the world—was a habit he needed to prove he couldn’t possibly kick. He could be the far-off yet rooted man who loved being a father; performing what he deemed “sane” tasks, such as building a henhouse; indulging his grim compulsions (smoking tobacco and writing books). The soul, eternal fabric of God, had no place in that equation.

Waugh wasn’t the only muddled reader of the book. In the aftermath of the Berlin blockade and the creation of NATO , followed by the Soviets’ detonation of their first atomic weapon , readers—Americans, especially—might have been eager for an anti-Stalinist bedtime story. But Orwell had already written an anti-Stalinist bedtime story. If his time on Jura tells us anything, it’s that in 1984 , he was exhorting us to beware of concentrated power and pay attention to public language, yes, but above all, guard your solitude against interlopers, Stalinist or otherwise.

In addition to the book’s top-down anxieties about the coming managerial overclass, a bottom-up anxiety about how fragile solitude is—irreducible to an abstract right or a material good—permeates 1984 . Paradoxically, Winston’s efforts to hold fast to the bliss of separateness are what give the book its unexpected turns of beauty and humanity. (“The sweet summer air played against his cheek. From somewhere far away there floated the faint shouts of children: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock.”) For all of Orwell’s intrepidness, his physical courage, his clarity of expression, his most resolutely anti-fascist instinct lay here: in his terror at the thought of never being alone.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “Orwell’s Escape.”

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George Orwell and Animal Farm: A Critical Analysis Essay (Critical Writing)

George Orwell is one of the most celebrated English writers in the 20 th century (George 1). Orwell’s literature is committed to telling the blatant truth about the violation of people’s freedom and the injustices against the common person (Dedria and Hall 479). Such phrases from his works such as “some animals are more equal than others” have become so popular especially in political dialogues and has shaped peoples opinions regarding the kind of society we live in (Kerala 36).

George Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair in India in 1903, where his British father worked as a civil servant. He had gone to school like any other normal child and graduated at Eaton. He worked in the Burma police force and later unsuccessfully tired his hand in a few business ventures but failed. He left for Spain where signed to fight in the Civil War.

His experience at the civil war de-motivated his views abut communalism so much that he decided to live a life of voluntary poverty (Dedria and Hall 479) . This was a deliberate effort to “experience want and the suffering of the oppressed.” He wanted to feel how poor people fell to help in shaping his own theories on socialism.

At this time, he had changed his name to P.S. Burton. His first novel Down and out in Paris was published as a response to his life in voluntary poverty. This was soon followed by Burmese Days and several other essays that questioned the capitalist state. His best novel so far is The Road to Wigan Pier which was published in 1937. It highlighted the pathetic life of the poor.

By this time, he had started gaining prominence as a writer and his works were starting to draw attention. He continued his writing with such other publications as Keep Aspidistra Flying and Coming up for Air followed in 1936 and 1939 respectively. His novel The Animal Farm is his most popular. It is a satirical piece that portrays a society that fully embraces totalitarian rules, much to the chagrin of those who want “individual freedom” (Kerala 36).

All of George Orwell’s novels seem to defend one main theme: socialism. Socialism is a means of production whereby everything is owned communally or by the government. Every one has equal opportunities to everything. The kind of socialism that George Orwell’s socialism advocates for has real life significance as it portrays “revolutionary idealism experienced in Russia and other countries which was betrayed by the revolutionaries themselves, who continue to pat lip service to revolutionary ideas” (Pierce para 6).

His novel then Animal Farm brilliantly employs satire in highlighting shameless betrayal by leaders who promised change (Dedria and Sharon 479). Orwell continues to portray authoritarianism as an enemy to individual freedoms.

There were concerted efforts to bring in a revolution that would save the people but always the new leaders upon tasting power, would betray this revolution. The new leaders would start to dictate what the same people whom they were fighting to save would do, or not do. Such betrayal was the end of socialism in the 20 th century. In this light, this paper will analyze one of his prized novels The Animal Farm.

The story begins in Mr. Jones’ farmhouse one night. Old major, a fatherly and respected pig, gathers the animals and informs them that they had endured deplorable conditions for a long period under the leadership of human beings and therefore a rebellion was necessary. Unfortunately, Old Major succumbs to old age. This leaves the other pigs to lead the fights for animal rights (Darell Para 1).

Two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball lead a successful revolution and after Mr. Jones and his family is driven out, Manor Farm is renamed The Animal Farm (para 2). Other farm owners try to attack the Animal Farm but Snowball lead a successful defense in the battle of the Cowshed and gains much worship amongst the animals (para 4). This is the beginning of his downfall. False rumors are spread by Squealer about him and when the conflict heightens he chased off the farm by Napoleons’ guard dogs (para 6).

Squealer is adopted as Napoleons spokes animal, and proposes the construction of a windmill, an idea that Napoleon takes credit for. Unfortunately the windmill is destroyed in a storm but Napoleon blames Snowball and sentences him to death, together with his sympathizers (para 6). Napoleon and the other pigs begin engaging in anti animalism behavior, such as doing business with men and drinking whiskey. To add to this, the food rations to other animals are reduced significantly (para 6).

To concur with his message that new and old leadership is alike; pigs begin to walk on two feet just like humans. They also start claiming, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” The novel culminates in the farm being renamed The Animal Farm while napoleon and other pigs initiate friendship with the human owners of the neighboring farm, and they become just like humans (para 8). It portrays the betrayal of the initial comradeship, and the pessimism of revolutionary movements (Hall and Poupard 348).

George Orwell creates characters carefully to fit in the roles that he needs them to play. Some characters play a major role in this novel. Mr. Jones is a tyrant who represents the old corrupt order. In the real world George Orwell model 20 th century dictators such as Stalin in Mr. Jones (Novelguide para 1).

Snowball and Napoleon are the two pigs who lead a successful revolution. They were ambitious of leadership and courageously fought Mr. Jones out of the farm (NovelGuide para 7-12). The pigs are symbolic of the calculating leaders who benefit from tyrannical leadership. They are opportunists who do not spare any chance afforded to them to exploit their advantaged position in the society (Hall and Poupard, 348).

Squealer is Napoleons manipulative tool in the farm. The dogs are a symbol security only that this security is used negatively. They are also another group of loyalist who are misused by the system to gain advantage over the common person (NovelGuide para 20- 22). However, other characters only play minor roles. Old major represents the good father figure in the society who can be relied upon to give concrete advice. He is respected by other animals who take to his advice without question (NovelGuide para 4).

Boxer and Clover in contrast are dedicated workers who spent all their life serving the society (They are also foolishly gullible in that they believe in all the propaganda spread by Squealer who is a “manipulative and persuasive figure” (Hall and Poupard 348). Just like Squealer, Moses is another manipulative and cunning character in the novel (NovelGuide para 7, 8; 13, 14). Benjamin is an enigmatic character who continues to do his work without care of what is happening (NovelGuide para 17).

The Animal Farm is a classic example of how governments exploit and deny citizens of their basic rights. At the beginning of the novel, the animals are united under the banner of exploitation by Mr. Jones. They manage to fight and install their own leaders in Napoleon.

However, Napoleon turns to be worse that Mr. Jones and “perverts the first commandments he helped make” (Pierce para 7). For example, he reduced food rations for the other animals other than the fellow pigs. Some animals as Boxer worked so hard, believing in their leaders but instead of being rewarded, were exploited for the benefit of the same leaders they served (Grade saver para 15-17). These governments use totalitarian rules, to stay in power and subvert justice.

The pigs lead a revolution against Mr. Jones totalitarian rule, but ends up worse. They not only “end up in Mr. Jones House and position but also in his clothes.” Some critics have used this evidence to explain that The Animal Farm is another successful attempt by the society to kill dissent (Hall & Poupard 349). Propaganda is also used to intimidate those who question the abuse of human rights. Napoleon manipulates information and deceives the animals when he gains full power.

He spreads false accusation against snowball leading to his expulsion from the farm. Squealer, Napoleons spokes animal, is the face of propaganda in this novel. He represents governments’ spokes people who are responsible of spreading rumors that help their government to gain a tighter grip on power (Grade saver para 9-11). As a last result, totalitarians use violence and terror, to silence the rebels. Its effect I that it makes people submit to such government. These who do not are either forcefully exiled or killed.

Such excesses were practiced against Snowball and his sympathizers. Terror can also be propagated through propaganda. Squealer instills fear into anyone who tries to question napoleons unethical conduct, with Mr. Jones return (Grade saver para 12-14). Another major theme highlighted with importance is Education. Unfortunately, it is present in a very negative light. In its essence education is supposed to enlighten people. However in this novel, those in power “manipulate those that are governed” by the use of education.

Take the case of the pigs as an example. They realize the intellectual vulnerability of the other animals and take advantage of it by manipulating the seven commandments to their advantage. Napoleon also uses education negatively when he teaches new pigs his oppressive doctrines (Grade saver para 7, 8). This mis-education cast the other animals deeper into oppression.

In conclusion, George Orwell manages to highlight the fact that the biggest political problem is not capitalism but authoritarian rules. Whether under capitalism of socialism authoritarianism is inevitable this is because of the insatiable nature of human beings. The novel The Animal Farm will continue to be relevant for eons to come it.

It explicitly portrays the “class struggles and exploitation in the human society” (Hall & Poupard, 348). New leaders, like Napoleon, who assume power on the platform of change, abandon the idea as soon as they come to power. Most of them end up being worse of than the ones they replaced. They are just turn coat revolutionaries who take advantage of people’s naïveté to fulfill their selfish personal ambition. Because of the effect his works have achieve he one of the best authors in the 20 th century.

Works Cited

Darrell, Victor. Plot Summary: Animal Farm, by George Orwell. N. d. Web.

Dedria, Bryfonski & Hall, Sharon. Twentieth century literary criticism: George Orwell . Michigan: Book Tower. 1979. Print.

“Grade saver.” Animal Farm Themes . 2010. Web.

Hall, Sharon & Poupard, Dennis. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Michigan: Book Tower,1982. Print.

Kerala, Calling. From Eric Blair to George Orwell, Biography. London: Sage, 2003. Print.

“NovelGuide.” Novel Analysis: Animal Farm, Characterization . 2010. Web.

Pearce, Robert . ‘ Orwell, Tolstoy, and ‘Animal Farm’ . The Review of English Studies , 1998. Web.

Storgaard, Claus. Opinion Essays : George Orwell, Socialist, Anarchist or what…? 2004. Web.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "George Orwell and Animal Farm: A Critical Analysis." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-orwell-and-animal-farm-a-critical-analysis/.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — 1984 — Totalitarianism in “1984”: A Critical Analysis

Totalitarianism in "1984": a Critical Analysis

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• Orwell and I

Read below our complete notes on the essay “Orwell and I” by Zulfikar Ghose. Our notes cover Orwell and I summary and analysis.

Orwell and I by Zulfikar Ghose Introduction

The essay is of great importance and a mirror to all the writers who belong to the former colonial regions. This essay sheds light on the fact that literature is all universal but it is not considered universal and even the writers are discriminated. He satires the attitude of English audience, journals, and writers; those who considered the writers from colonies as inferior. Zulfikar Ghose highlights the adverse effects of nationalism in literature which makes it biased literature. Zulfikar thinks that literature should be beyond prejudices because it is universal. Literature must not be treated as a tool to make people inferior. He is of the opinion that writers must not be judged on the basis of their country and origin rather they should be judged according to the quality of their work.

Orwell and I by Zulfikar Ghose Summary

Zulfikar Ghose starts his essay by asserting that George Orwell and he were born in India. It was the era of Pre-Partition, when India was ruled by British. He says that he started going to school and by the age of thirteenth, he would recite the poems of Shakespeare and Lord Byron. He then says that Orwell was taken to England when he was a child while he, himself, along with his parents was taken to England when he was a teenager.

Lines 11-15

Zulfikar says when he arrived in London in 1952, Orwell had already died. He then says that he like Orwell pursued a literary career and started writing for London Periodicals and BBC as Orwell did before him. He published his book as Orwell had published it before him. Zulfikar then states that the commonalities between Orwell and he were this much and they end at that very juncture.

Lines 16-23

He then gives the birth location of Orwell that he was born in Motihari located in the north of India and was taken to England when he was a baby of less than one year. Afterwards, Zulfikar gives his own account that he was born in Sialkot; he grew up in Sialkot and then in Bombay. His family migrated to England when he was 17 years old. He then posts a question what would happened if he was taken to England in first year of birth while Orwell, 17 years old. Then he answers as well that it would have made no difference at all.

Lines 24-30

He then says that Orwell would still have been seen as English writer because he was an English born writer while he, Zulfikar, would be inferior in ranking where he was placed after publishing his work in London. He says this was to happen because Orwell was a writer on unquestioned greatness.

Lines 31-37

He says the issue is not of racism and colonialism that he was looked down upon while Orwell was celebrated but it was the issue of nationalism. He even states that English have never been racist, though mockingly. He gives an example of it, when he graduated he could not find a single job, then he says that it was because of nationalism and cultural exclusivity which people are always drawn to.

Lines 38-49

Zulfikar says that his experience in London proved him wrong because he was of the opinion that people would be admired because of the quality of their work but things were contrary. He then says he had formed the notion that Orwell was praised because his prose was superior in imagination and style to others. Because it is the basic notion of thought formed by the study of literature and Zulfikar had studied literature.

Lines 50-62

Zulfikar’s notion was proved wrong. In a gathering, an English poet of no quality and Zulfikar were invited to a university. They were to read their own poetry. The English audience listened to the Zulfikar quite calmly but the English poet was listened with great praise and enthusiasm. Zulfikar then says that this was a sort of discrimination because they were good towards their natives. He then says that the following year Zulfikar was included in the Penguin Modern poets. Three poets were to be included s two English poets were there in the book as well. The book was reviewed by The Guardian which spoke well for the two English poets but didn’t mention Zulfikar.

Lines 63-87

He then says that it was not racism but nationalism. His view is that the English are reluctant to recognize an individual non-native superior than natives. The non-natives are considered as aliens. One of them said that the early years of century`s poetry was the poetry known written by Georgian poets so Eliot and Pound had wasted their time in writing something new in poetry. This gave raise to Philip Larkin. He knew nothing about foreign trends and wrote domestic poetry. He was applauded because of the same nationalistic glee.

Lines 88-124

Zulfikar says that the worst category among all the categories of literature is nationalistic literature. As English is the language of many nations so dividing English literature on nationalistic basis is very worst. He says for this English language a hierarchy is formed;

Writers who belong to United Kingdom, Ireland and USA are primary English language writers.

The secondary class is of the writers who belong to the British colonies like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The third and lower rank is of the writers who belong to Africa, Asia and Caribbean.

He then says that this seems racial discrimination but the very roots of this are in nationalism. He then gives another example of this attitude, he says that Joseph Conrad was far greater writer than Thomas Hardy but Hardy is celebrated more than Joseph Conrad because he was alien to English language and English land.

Lines 125-131

Zulfikar then shares another experience and says that the journals like TLS and New Statesman would send his books for the review to a critic of Pakistani or Indian origin and they would include the review which was a clear cut message to the readers that it was not worth reading. He adds that the same was the attitude of The Observer which would collect the reviews of novels written by women at the end of the page under the title Novels by Women. The reader would know not to read the section. Similarly none bothered to read Zulfikar who was reviewed by Chaudhri.

Lines 132-153

He then says that it is very easy to count the bad deeds done to one individual but the ground reality is always somewhat different as well. The fact is that there must be many an English writer who seeing another Indian or Sri Lankan win a Booker Prize must complain that the judges were favoring the former colonial subjects for political reasons and not looking at literary quality. He then says that this national origin worked against writers such as Zulfikar. He says when he publishing his works, other writers from the former colonies also published their works, giving a rise to a new category of literature- Commonwealth Literature. He says this was another sort of discrimination because all those writers were yet not considered equal in rank to English writers of UK and America.

Lines 154-165

He then says that this category provided more chances for publishing the works this limited their scope. By calling them Commonwealth writers and publishing their Commonwealth anthologies meant they were to be kept away from main stream writers and their audience.

The remaining paragraphs talk about the discrepancies caused by the nationalistic glow in literature because literature is universal rather than national.

Orwell and I Literary Analysis

• The essay shows the attitude of the English people and literary circles towards the writers of colonized regions.
• Zulfikar Ghose highlights the hypocrisy of English people who always talk about humanism and teach it as well.
• But the reality is that they are racist and prejudiced people.
• Ghose also sheds light on the negative aspect of English people who favor literature as universal but the reality is very contrary to it.
• Zulfikar exposes the attitude of renowned English Journals which, too, are biased.
• He is of the view that English have always considered themselves superior in every walk of life.
• They have even treated the literature in same perspective.
• He mocks their division of literature on the basis of nationalism. They have divided the literature to show the writers belong to which region.
• On such basis they would then treat the writers.
• Zulfikar also satirizes the attitude of English audience towards non-native writers because they consider them inferior.
• Zulfikar points out that English do not accept the superiority of other writers and for such reason they always mistreat them.
• Zulfikar tries to point out the adverse effects of nationalism and gives a lesson of not treating literature and writers through national fervor because writers and art has no boundary.

More From Zulfikar Ghose

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I know that you’ve done work on pairing Ph.D. students with kindergartners so that the children can help the graduate students with problem-solving. What does that look like in practice?

When I started teaching at the university [University of Wisconsin-Madison], I couldn’t understand why all the grad students were so miserable. Then I thought, it is this laser focus on getting one particular thing done. But the kids could shift the students’ perspectives in really helpful ways. And my students had to be on the floor with them working together. It’s hard to explain, but it changes you.

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Times best sellers: Stephen Breyer, the former Supreme Court justice, shares some of his philosophies in “Reading the Constitution,” which enters the hardcover nonfiction list .

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Fall in love with the pianist and vocalist Shirley Horn .

Make the perfect friendship bracelet .

Move your home office outside .

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to watch for.

A total eclipse crosses over North America tomorrow.

Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, is expected to begin this week.

The House of Representatives is expected to deliver impeachment articles against the homeland security secretary on Wednesday. The Senate could quickly dismiss them.

South Korea will hold parliamentary elections on Wednesday.

Biden is hosting a leaders’ summit on Thursday with the prime minister of Japan and the president of the Philippines.

Coachella begins on Friday.

A spring-cleaning of your kitchen might mean clearing out condiments and jars from your fridge. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter , Genevieve Ko offers recipes to help you declutter. Add a spicy condiment to chicken or tahini to a spinach-and-cilantro soup.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee . Yesterday’s pangram was logophile .

Can you put eight historical events — including the first airplane, the peace sign and “tulip mania” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword , Wordle , Sudoku , Connections and Strands .

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Matt Stevens writes about arts and culture news for The Times. More about Matt Stevens