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.
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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