LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:6 June 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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George Orwell in Our Time

Braja Kishore Sahoo, Ph.D.


George Orwell
Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

Abstract

George Orwell (1903-1950) occupies a significant place in the English literary imagination. A political and cultural commentator, as well as an accomplished novelist, Orwell is one of the most widely-read essayists of the 20th century. He is best remembered for his two novels written towards the end of his life: Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). In this paper I intend to focus on some of his representative essays and non-fiction writings to suggest that Orwell is very much alive to the vital issues of our time through his extensive range of interests ranging from politics, war, and sports, to issues such as language and literature. We can say that history has treated him well, proving him right about the key issues of the twentieth century. In the bipolar political climate of the 1930s and 1940s, when intellectuals on the left and right were getting ready to confront the evils of totalitarianism and fascism, Orwell saw that the choice between Stalinism and fascism was in fact no choice at all, that the real struggle was between freedom and tyranny.

Keywords: Animal Farm, George Orwell, totalitarianism, fascism, tyranny, freedom

George Orwell

A conservative by upbringing, and a socialist and a dissident by nature, he did not believe in politics as a matter of allegiance to a party or camp. What he did believe in was his own sensibility or that which he described as his "power of facing unpleasant facts." As Christopher Hitchens observes in his biographical essay, Why Orwell Matters, this "power of facing" proved important to Orwell, whose life was filled with more than its share of unpleasantness and danger. While working as a policeman in Burma he had experienced the complex workings of Empire and its insidious, baneful effects on the colonizer and the colonized alike; and while fighting in the Spanish Civil War alongside the anarchists of Catalonia, many of whom were arrested as "Trotskyites" by Soviet forces, he had witnessed the wickedness of Stalinism. In Paris, London, and the various mining towns of Northern England, where he immersed himself in life at the lowest rungs of society, he had seen the limitations of both the Church and the State to elevate the poor. Throughout these experiences, he had expressed his nonconformist views and faced considerable social and professional adversity with poise and equanimity.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Braja Kishore Sahoo, Ph.D.
Lecturer in English
Ramamani Mahavidyalaya
Kantabad
Khurda -752061
Odisha
India
sahoobraja91@gmail.com
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