George Orwell Is Best Known

¶ … George Orwell is best known for his best-selling books, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) and Animal Farm. But he is recognized by scholars as a prolific writer of essays, many of which are classic, brilliant, and cut to the bone vis-a-vis the subject matter at hand. This paper reviews several essays by Orwell, and the paper links Orwell's essays with the way he incorporates his political positions into his narratives.

"Who Are the War Criminals?"

Orwell along with the whole civilized world knew that Mussolini was a neurotic madman, obsessed with power, a fascist who was only too willing to become ideologically attached at the hip to the most notoriously evil, bloodthirsty demagogue in history, Hitler. And so Orwell, politically progressive and acutely aware of all that was going on in Europe during WWII, had plenty of material to use in his critique of The Trial of Mussolini. Orwell wrote this essay in 1943, and he says at the outset that "…At long last Righteousness had triumphed" because the "wicked man was discomfited"; but he quickly uses a kind of Socratic logic in asserting that it would be hard to accuse Mussolini of a crime "…in power politics there are no crimes, because there are no laws."

Orwell enjoys using quotes from prominent people to back up his assertions; when he asserts that it will be difficult to put Mussolini on trial since his "scoundrelism" (Orwell's own word) was "lauded to the skies by the very people who are now promising to bring him to trial." He also enjoys dishing out truisms regarding political icons for whom history has heaped endless praise upon -- like Winston Churchill's 1927 quote: "If I had been an Italian I am sure I would have been whole-heartedly with you" [as you struggled against Leninism].

Rather than just rip Mussolini for his bad behavior, Orwell coyly blasts the politicians that failed to take measures against a person like Mussolini. The British, Orwell writes, could have prevented Mussolini from siding with Hitler, but they were too busy -- like Lord Lloyd -- "buttering up the Fascist regime." In fact, the "Tory press" showed a kind of "imbecile optimism" for believing Mussolini was to be trusted; indeed Orwell chastises the "cynical abandonment of one ally after another" by the British government. "The flat refusal to believe the dictators meant war," Orwell rages, "even when they shouted it from the housetops" is a serious indictment of England. Moreover, the author continues, the "inability of the moneyed class to see anything wrong whatever in concentration camps, ghettos, massacres and undeclared wars" leads an essayist like Orwell to believe that "moral decadence played its part as well as mere stupidity" in allowing Mussolini to become the savage fascist that he was.

Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels

Orwell was more than a great novelist and a powerful essayist -- he was also a satirist of great note. In his essay he does use satire, but betwixt and between the satires one can easily read Orwell's contempt for the images Jonathan Swift creates. Orwell asserts that he is not "against Swift" and in no way does he try to "belittle him" as an author. However, Orwell is "against him" in a "political and moral sense." Having said that, he quickly turns friendly saying that the "fascination" he has with Swift's stories is "inexhaustible" and among the list of six books he could have preserved when "…all others were destroyed," yes, he would include Gulliver's Travels. He doesn't say what the other five would be, but he goes on to say that "millions of people" must have found enjoyment reading Gulliver's Travels; and while those millions saw the antihuman implications "more or less," the fact that they buy into Swift's negativism means they were not particularly shocked or turned off by the stories.

It obviously bothers Orwell that Jonathan Swift sees nothing in "…human life except dirt, folly and wickedness"; and yet Orwell seems to be saying, why play to those dark aspects of life? Once Orwell has let his reader know that he finds aspects of Swift's stories disgusting, Orwell goes on to admit that humans (at least aspects of the human condition) and the life that humans live is terrible, dirty, disgusting, and pathetic.

This may be the satirical Orwell in motion. He blasts Swift for the darkness in Swift's stories but in the next breath Orwell launches into a narrative diatribe against the "horror of existence." To wit: "The human body is beautiful: it is also repulsive and ridiculous, a fact which can be verified at any swimming pool. The sexual organs are objects of desire and also of loathing, so much so that in many languages… their names are uses as words of abuse. Meat is delicious, but a butcher's shop makes one feel sick" and indeed all our food springs ultimately from "dung and dead bodies." Children are horrified by "snot and spittle" and they are made sick by "the dogs' excrement on the pavement" and by the toad that is dead and "full of maggots." Humans do smell sweaty, which is nauseating, and old men are "hideous" with the "bulbous noses" and "bald heads."

If things are this bad in reality, then how can Orwell justify busting Swift for his unorthodox portrayal of tiny humans in weird situations? Is this the satire? And where is the political message in this essay, as Orwell is noted for? Ah ha! "Human behavior, too, especially in politics, is as [Swift] describes it, although it contains other more important factors which he refuses to admit." Linked to the political world are "both the horror and pain" that relate to the "continuance of life on this planet," Orwell goes on, having earlier in the essay said that in Parts I and III Swift "descends into political partisanship of a narrow kind." Orwell doesn't say what "narrow kind" means but having read his books and his essays, he most certainly is talking about right wing demagoguery. Orwell somehow finds a way to get a lick in on Hitler when he mentions the "unattractive Houyhnhnms" in Swift's book, who -- "except for their feelings towards the Yahoos, who occupy rather the same place in their community as the Jews in Nazi Germany -- anger and hatred" (Orwell, 1950).

What one can see after reviewing Orwell's essays is that the tensions he criticizes in others writings and deeds, are the same kinds of tensions that he creates in his own books and stories. Since he knows a thing or two about cynicism and about being cryptic, he is the right author to dig into others' tales that include the same themes and tones. He's brilliant at digging deeply into others' works, and that's what makes his essay so entertaining and worthwhile reading.

Tropic of Cancer

Anyone that has read Henry Miller's novel, Tropic of Cancer, and who also knows Orwell's writing -- and point-of-view -- will understand immediately that Orwell has plenty to say about Tropic of Cancer. Plenty, and then some. Orwell takes issue with anyone that compares Tropic of Cancer with James Joyce's Ulysses. Joyce is an "artist," Orwell points out, and Miller is "simply a hardboiled person talking about life, an ordinary American businessman with intellectual courage and a gift for words." Ulysses and Tropic of Cancer do have something in common, Orwell admits, and that is they both use a lot of "dirty words" and both authors are willing to "mention the inane squalid facts of everyday life." But that is about as far as Orwell will let the comparison go. Joyce is "an artist, in a sense in which Miller not," and Joyce is exploring "different states of consciousness, dream, reverie, drunkenness, and dovetailing them all into a huge complex pattern." As for Miller, he is not much more than a man with good writing skills that loves using filth as adjectives -- if you believe Orwell.

Going deeper into Tropic of Cancer, Orwell rips Miller for writing about the dregs of Paris during the 1930s when there were far more important scenes to be writing about. There were 30,000 painters in Paris -- most of them were "imposters," Orwell asserts. And every phony American writer or artist was hanging out in Paris in that period, hoping to be part of something cool. After spending a long paragraph explaining what a mess it was in Paris, and by doing so he was actually setting the stage for criticizing Miller's novel, he goes on to mention the "sour reek of refuse, the bistros with their greasy zinc counters and worn brick floors… the crumbling iron urinals…" and ends that narrative by asserting that "…no material could be less promising."

In the next paragraph the politics comes into the essay: "When Tropic of Cancer was published the Italians were marching into Abyssinia" and Hitler's death camps "were already bulging"; hence, in Orwell's considered opinion, it did not seem "a moment at which a novel of outstanding value was likely to be written about American dead-beats cadging drinks in the Latin Quarter" of Paris. So, the reader of this essay was set up by Orwell perfectly: blast away at the stinking rotting, drunken social scene in Paris, frequented in large part by Americans pretending to have talent, and mention that Miller thought this was cool to write about. Then bring in the terrible, frightening and bloody realities happening elsewhere in Europe, and you have shown what a rascal Miller was.

But wait, Orwell admits that novelists don't always have to write about "contemporary history" and yet he adds, and this is classic Orwell in his political suit of clothes, that a novelist that "simply disregards the major public events of the moment is generally either a footler or a plain idiot." Wow! Miller is a plain idiot for writing that trashy novel that was a best seller? You have to love Orwell's candor and plainspoken narrative. There can be no doubt where he stands.

Wells, Hitler and the World State (1941)

Orwell tales on H.G. Wells in this essay, and it begins with quotes from Wells that suggest Hitler is about done and that most of the Nazi troops are "…dead or disheartened or worn out." Of course nothing could be further from the truth in 1941, and Orwell has Wells' for lunch on this one. There isn't room on this final page of the essay to cite all the clever and not-so-clever ways the Orwell blasts Wells, but he lists Wells as one of the "left wing intellectuals" that have been minimizing the danger of Hitler. "The people who say that Hitler is Antichrist, or alternatively, the Holy Ghost, are nearer an understanding of the truth than the intellectuals who for ten dreadful years have kept it up that [Hitler] is merely a figure out of comic opera, not with taking seriously." What this reflects, Orwell asserts, is the "sheltered conditions of English life," and indeed, Wells is one of those sheltered Brits: "The thunder of guns, the jingle of spurs, the catch in the throat when the old flag goes by, leave him manifestly cold," Orwell charges, again combining political perspectives with writers that don't get it.