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Political Style Of George Orwell

Decent Essays

George Orwell is well-known for his writing focusing on political events throughout Europe. His most popular novels sent warnings about totalitarianism to its readers, leaving that as his mark in literature. However, a closer look at his writing shows his changing political views based on both the political movements at the time and Orwell’s experiences with those political movements. Eric Arthur Blair, better known under the pseudonym George Orwell, based his writing on the political climate during his time. Living from 1903 to 1950, Orwell found himself writing about the ever-changing, politically-charged environment around him. As Orwell wrote, background information must be included because one cannot “assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development.” His father, who Orwell was not close to, was a minor British official in the Indian Civil Service, which would later influence his opinion on British imperialism in Burma. His family was lower-middle-class, even though they had high social status. They returned to England, where Orwell went to school at Eton on a scholarship (Baker vii). He was unhappy during his time at school since his family made much less money than the other boys there. After Eton, he returned to Burma as a member of the Imperial constabulary. He discovered that he was hated by the Burmese since he was a symbol of British imperialism, which made him hate the work itself (viii).
His experiences lead to his writing, Burmese Days, and his return to England to live amongst the beggars in the East End of London. His experiences both there and in the slums of Paris lead to Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier. The latter ended with harsh criticisms of the socialist movements of the time. His time in the Spanish Civil War, which included nearly losing his life at the hands of communists who wanted to suppress their political opponents, was detailed in Homage to Catalonia and left him with a lifelong dread of communism. This experience could have been why his next writing, Coming Up for Air, showed a more conservative side (Baker vii).
Nevertheless, his journalistic writing just a few years later combined patriotic sentiment with the

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