George Orwell, life and works

GEORGE ORWELL: BIOGRAFIA

George Orwell Life.

Orwell was born in India. His father was a minor customs official who made sacrifices to send George to public schools in England. Orwell was aware of class divisions and he sympathized for the working class. After school he joined the Indian Imperial Police. His experiences there provided material for his first novel, Burmese Days. Later he worked in ill-paid jobs in Paris and London, where he came in contact with the life of the poor people that he described in his autobiographical work “Down and out in Paris and London”. In this period he disliked colonialism and developed strong left-wing political convictions and when the Spanish Civil War broke out, Orwell joined the Republican side against Franco. In “Homage to Catalonia” Orwell describes the war. When the communists destroyed the anarchists, Orwell became an outspoken critic of Stalinism that he regarded as reactionary as fascism. Both “Animal farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-four” are written from the point of view of an unaligned democratic socialist and present two political systems characterized by both Stalinist and Fascist elements. Journalism was important in Orwell’s life, indeed his essays and articles where published in collections called “Inside the Whale” and “Critical Essays”. He died of tuberculosis in 1950.

George Orwell: biografia, stile e opere

GEORGE ORWELL: PENSIERO

The man and the artist
Orwell’s experiences and life influenced his way of writing. He was first an English writer, so he had a deep understanding of the English character whit its tolerance, its dislike of abstract theories. On the other side Orwell’s experiences abroad helped him to see his country from the outside and to see its weaknesses and strengths. He was an insider and outsider at the same time. He welcomed new ideas and impressions; His voyages  in Paris, North of England and Spain were an attempt to experience aspects of life unknown to him. Orwell’s works were also characterized by the conflict between his bourgeois background and education and his emotional identification with the working class.
The urge to inform
In his essay “Why I write” Orwell confessed that at the beginning he wanted to write “ enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings”  . However his urge to inform led him to believe that writing interprets reality, so it has an useful social function. Orwell’s creative imagination as novelist was overcome by his attempt to educate and persuade. This explains why in Orwell’s works there are subjective feelings, especially in his novels that express political themes.
The writer’s role
In his essay “Inside the Whale”, Orwell tried to define the role of the writer in the 1920s and 1930s. The writers of the Twenties expressed pessimism post-war, while the writers of the Thirties sympathized with the communist party and had social purpose. In contrast, Orwell believed that the writer should be independent and that good writing not depend from the party line.
Social themes
Orwell is known as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. He had in common with Dickens the choice of social themes and the use of realistic and factual language. He insisted on tolerance, justice and decency in human relationships and warned against the increasing artificiality of urban civilization. He presented a devastating critique of totalitarianism, warning against the violation of liberty and helping his readers to recognize tyranny in all its form.

GEORGE ORWELL: LA FATTORIA DEGLI ANIMALI

Animal Farm. Plot - Mr Jones is the owner of Manor Farm. He mistreats the animals. One of them, a pig called Major inspires the others with a dream of freedom from human beings. He dies, but his ideas are supported by two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball that drive the humans out from the farm. Now all the animals work for each other. But the things will change. At the first, the animals’ life is guided by Seven Commandments based on equality, however they are gradually altered by the pigs. The pigs are the brains of the community and they begin to have some privileges , they also insist on total obedience to protect the farm against humans. At the end all the Seven Commandments are abandoned and only one remains: ” all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”.