George Orwell

Early YearsO Born in India (1903)

O Colony of EnglandO Attended Private School

O Class Differences

Burma (1922-1927)O English ColonyO Imperial PoliceO Anti-colonialismO Burmese Days

Butler: “ ‘Bout twenty pounds, master. Will only last today, I think. I find it very difficult to keep ice cool now.”Ellis: “Don’t talk like that, damn you – ‘I find it very difficult!’ Have you swallowed a dictionary? ‘Please, master, can’t keeping ice cool’ – that’s how you ought to talk.”

-Burmese Days

Later LifeO Lived in near poverty by choiceO Essayist, Journalist, NovelistO Animal Farm (1945)O 1984 (1949)O Died 1950

Why One WritesO Sheer EgoismO Aesthetic enthusiasmO Historical ImpulseO Political Purpose

O “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.” (Why I Write)

“Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party”

O “For some years past I have managed to make the capitalist class pay me several pounds a week for writing books against capitalism.”

O “The time is coming – not next year, perhaps not for ten or twenty years, but it is coming – when every writer will have the choice of being silenced altogether or of producing the dope that a privileged minority demands”O Vampires?O Current Music Industry?O WikiLeaks?

On Political LanguageO “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful

and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

O “Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism?”

O “In the case of a work like democracy, not only is there no agreed upon definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”

O - “Politics and the English Language”

Language and Thoughts

O “[Language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

O “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

O - “Politics and the English Language”

On NatureO “Is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, under the

shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of the blackbird’s song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenomenon which does not cost money an does not have what the editors of Left-wing newspapers call a class angle?”

O “People, so the thought runs, ought to be discontented, and it is our job to multiply our wants and not simply to increase our enjoyment of the things we have already. The other idea is that this is the age of machines and that to dislike the machine, or even to want to limit its domination, is backward-looking, reactionary, and slightly ridiculous.”

O “The atoms bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”

O - “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad”

1984 as Science FictionO Technology to serve political ends

O Surveillance O TortureO WarsO Keeping the top in chargeO PropagandaO Changing languageO Changing history