Article المقال ( Janvier )

 

Orwell’s Dystopian Vision

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Written by: Prof. Essam Fattouh

Professor of English Literature 

Department of English

Faculty of Arts – University of Alexandria

 

 

Within less than five years, George Orwell succeeded in producing two masterpieces of original fiction-writing. The two novels may be seen as the culmination of a lifetime of strife and struggle against political repression and a condemnation of the rise and establishment of a totalitarian state. Eric Blair, George Orwell’s real name, was a unique kind of eccentric, yet committed, political writer, who devoted his entire life to serving the cause of truth, to expose the language of deceit through which power seeks to dominate and subjugate the masses in its bid for total hegemony and absolute control.

Blair’s interest in writing can be traced back to his school days, where he found the hypocrisy and snobbishness of his fellow-students and colleagues at Eton off-putting, which goes a long way to account for his conscious choice to self-isolate and develop an unconventional style of writing—critical of the status quo, and invariably taking the side of the down-trodden, the repressed and the underprivileged.

Unable to receive a formal university education, Orwell graduated as a police-officer, serving in Burma. It did not take Orwell long, however, to comprehend the true role of the police in promoting social conformity and subservience to Britain as an oppressive colonialist power. “The government of all the Indian provinces, under the control of the British Empire, is of necessity despotic, because only the threat of force can subdue a population of several million subjects.”

Orwell’s decision to profess writing and his accomplished style were destined to redefine the essay as a literary form. He may also be credited for pioneering what was to become investigative journalism. Not content with theoretical rhetorical pleas for the disadvantaged, Orwell decided to practically join their ranks. His articles, which constitute Down and Out in London and Paris (1933), amply demonstrate his experiences as a menial worker, a coal-miner, sharing the lives of the unemployed, the criminal element, the downtrodden, in two of the most affluent European capitals.

Orwell felt compelled to carry a gun, defending the endangered voices calling for democracy in Spain, threatened by Fascism, for which Franco and his forces blatantly stood. A deep sense of betrayal by Stalin, who formed an alliance with the fascists, soon rendered Orwell, the idealistic freedom fighter, both disillusioned and bitter; and soon the seeds for Orwell’s allegorical presentation of how the pigs betrayed the revolution in Animal Farm were sown.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Orwell was desperate to become involved in England’s war effort, by joining the military, but was turned down, because of the state of his lungs, by the Medical Board which declared him unfit for military activity. He, nonetheless, joined the Home Guard, lecturing on civil defense, street fighting, and the possibility of armed resistance should the German forces succeed in invading Britain.

Orwell’s staunch hostility towards Stalin through what he termed the “Stalin-Hitler pact”, however, should in no way blind us to his convictions as a socialist, even though it may account for his skepticism about, and hostility towards, official communist parties in England and elsewhere.

The Eastern Service of the BBC finally offered him “war work” in 1941. His short assignment at the BBC forced Orwell to re-examine the relationship between public consciousness and the use of language, a major theme of his second masterpiece 1984. The studio where he recorded his broadcasts was located in Room 101!

Animal Farm may be said to combine two strains of literary style that have always characterized his best work: the fairy tale as a genre and the satirical style of his Anglo-Irish mentor, Jonathan Swift. During his last week at the BBC, Orwell had readapted Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The theme of innocence and truth, exposing the power of propaganda, was to become a permanent feature of Orwell’s subsequent writing. Swift’s bitter satire, and the touch of his political pessimism, which sometimes borders on misanthropy, also pervade Orwell’s two classic novels.