George Orwell's Essays: Politics, Satire, and War
This paper examines several of George Orwell's most notable essays, tracing the consistent political consciousness that runs through each one. Moving from "Who Are the War Criminals?" through his critiques of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, H.G. Wells, and his personal reflections on the Spanish Civil War, the paper demonstrates how Orwell consistently embeds progressive political commentary into literary criticism and personal narrative. The analysis also draws on Harold Bloom's anthology to acknowledge critics who found Orwell's work troubling or perverse, ultimately affirming Orwell's legacy as an independent and fearless writer.
- Introduction: Orwell as Essayist: Orwell's reputation as essayist and political writer
- Who Are the War Criminals?: Orwell critiques Mussolini and British political failures
- Politics vs. Literature: Orwell on Gulliver's Travels: Orwell's ambivalent critique of Swift's dark vision
- Orwell on Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer: Orwell dismisses Miller compared to Joyce
- Wells, Hitler, and the World State: Orwell attacks Wells for underestimating Hitler
- Looking Back on the Spanish War: Orwell's visceral firsthand account of war's ugliness
- Critical Responses to Orwell and His Legacy: Bloom and critics debate Orwell's perverse appeal
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves essay by essay through Orwell's work, giving each piece its own focused section while maintaining a consistent through-line about Orwell's political consciousness.
- Direct quotation is used extensively and purposefully — the paper lets Orwell's own phrasing make the analytical point, which suits a subject famous for his precise prose style.
- The conclusion brings in external critical voices (Bloom, Macdonald, Ash) to add balance before reasserting the paper's central admiration for Orwell's independence.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates thematic synthesis across primary texts: rather than analyzing one essay in depth, it identifies a recurring pattern — Orwell's insertion of political perspective into literary commentary — and traces that pattern across five distinct essays. This approach shows how a writer's worldview can serve as a unifying lens for otherwise disparate works.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief framing introduction, then devotes one section to each of five Orwell essays in roughly chronological order. Each section summarizes the essay's subject, quotes key passages, and explains how political critique operates within it. A closing section introduces critical dissent through Harold Bloom's anthology before offering a brief defense of Orwell's unconventional life and lasting influence.
Introduction: Orwell as Essayist
George Orwell is best known for his bestselling books Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) and Animal Farm, but scholars also recognize him as a prolific writer of essays — many of which are classic, brilliant, and penetrating in their treatment of the subject at hand. This paper reviews several of those essays and examines how Orwell incorporates his political positions into his literary 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 align himself ideologically with the most notoriously evil, bloodthirsty demagogue in history: Hitler. Politically progressive and acutely aware of everything unfolding in Europe during World War II, Orwell had plenty of material to draw on in his critique of The Trial of Mussolini. Written in 1943, the essay opens with the declaration that "at long last Righteousness had triumphed" because the "wicked man was discomfited." Orwell then quickly deploys a kind of Socratic logic, asserting that it would be difficult to accuse Mussolini of a crime since "in power politics there are no crimes, because there are no laws."
Orwell characteristically uses quotes from prominent people to support his arguments. He points out that it will be difficult to put Mussolini on trial because his "scoundrelism" — Orwell's own coinage — was "lauded to the skies by the very people who are now promising to bring him to trial." He also dishes out truisms about political figures upon whom history has heaped praise. Winston Churchill's 1927 remark is one such example: "If I had been an Italian I am sure I would have been whole-heartedly with you" — that is, with Mussolini — as he struggled against Leninism.
Rather than simply attacking Mussolini for his crimes, Orwell more pointedly blasts the politicians who failed to act. The British, he writes, could have prevented Mussolini from siding with Hitler, but they were too busy — like Lord Lloyd — "buttering up the Fascist regime." The "Tory press" showed a kind of "imbecile optimism" in believing Mussolini could be trusted, and Orwell chastises the "cynical abandonment of one ally after another" by the British government. "The flat refusal to believe the dictators meant war," Orwell charges, "even when they shouted it from the housetops," amounts to a serious indictment of England. Furthermore, the "inability of the moneyed class to see anything wrong whatever in concentration camps, ghettos, massacres and undeclared wars" leads Orwell to conclude 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: Orwell on Gulliver's Travels
Orwell was more than a great novelist and a powerful political essayist — he was also a satirist of considerable note. In his essay on Gulliver's Travels, he employs satire himself, but woven between the satirical passages one can plainly read Orwell's contempt for many of the images Jonathan Swift creates. Orwell insists he is not "against Swift" and makes no attempt to "belittle him" as an author. However, he is "against him" in a "political and moral sense." Having said that, he quickly turns generous, saying that his "fascination" with Swift's stories is "inexhaustible," and that among six books he would preserve if "all others were destroyed," he would include Gulliver's Travels. He does not name the other five, but notes that "millions of people" must have enjoyed the book; and while those readers grasped the antihuman implications "more or less," the fact that they embraced Swift's negativism suggests they were not particularly shocked or put off by it.
It clearly troubles Orwell that Jonathan Swift sees nothing in "human life except dirt, folly and wickedness," and yet Orwell seems almost to catch himself — why, he implies, should one fault Swift for dwelling on those dark aspects of life? Once Orwell has signaled his disgust with certain elements of Swift's tales, he goes on to admit that aspects of the human condition and of everyday life are indeed terrible, dirty, disgusting, and pathetic.
This may be the satirical Orwell in full motion. He blasts Swift for the darkness in his stories and in the very next breath launches into his own diatribe against the "horror of existence." To quote at length:
"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 used as words of abuse. Meat is delicious, but a butcher's shop makes one feel sick" — and all our food springs ultimately from "dung and dead bodies." Children are horrified by "snot and spittle" and made sick by "the dogs' excrement on the pavement" and by the toad that is dead and "full of maggots." Humans smell sweaty, which is nauseating, and old men are "hideous" with "bulbous noses" and "bald heads."
If things are this bad in reality, how can Orwell justify taking Swift to task for his unorthodox portrayals of tiny humans in bizarre situations? Is this itself the satire? And where is the political message, for which Orwell is so well known? It emerges when Orwell writes: "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 had earlier noted that in Parts I and III Swift "descends into political partisanship of a narrow kind" — and though Orwell does not spell out what "narrow kind" means, readers familiar with his other work can reasonably infer he is referencing right-wing demagoguery. Orwell even finds a way to connect Swift's fiction to Hitler, noting the "unattractive Houyhnhnms," who — "except for their feelings towards the Yahoos, who occupy rather the same place in their community as the Jews in Nazi Germany" — embody "anger and hatred" (Orwell, 1950).
What emerges from this essay is that the tensions Orwell criticizes in others' writings and deeds are the same kinds of tensions he creates in his own books and stories. Because he knows a great deal about cynicism and about being cryptic, he is precisely the right author to dissect works that share those themes and tones. His skill at penetrating others' texts is what makes this essay so entertaining and worthwhile.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. George Orwell. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007.
Orwell, George. "Criticism of Tropic of Cancer." Inside the Whale. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An Age Like This, 1920–1940. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968. 493–502.
Orwell, George. "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1942). Project Gutenberg Australia. Retrieved December 15, 2011, from
Orwell, George. "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels." Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays.
Orwell, George. "Wells, Hitler and the World State" (1941). Project Gutenberg Australia. Retrieved December 15, 2011, from
Orwell, George. "Who Are the War Criminals?" The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: My Country Right or Left, 1940–1943. Ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.
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