About George Orwell - recommendation

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.
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As a student who study literature you might heard about George Orwell. I studied his short essay "shooting an elephant" (click for a full text) in 2008 winter in England and America literature ciriticism. It was a story of author's experience in Burma. At that time he was a sub-divisional police officer of the town. one day, he went to a town because an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. when he arrived there, he felt isolation among the native and feel pressure and fear. An elephant crushed a person so there were no chance without shooting an elephant. At first, he tries to steady the elephant but native people ask him to shooting. under the pressure, he shoot the elephant but the elephant doesn't die for long time. author shoots agian and agian while watching elepahnt's dying. In the end, he leave the place because he can't watch that anymore. After few hours he heard that it take more than 1 hour until the elephant die and native people rush to dead elephant to get meat and skin.
This article is about a Colonialism. We know how Colonialism destorys people who under a rule but we didn't think about people who have to show strongness in front of slave. Even though they don't want to kill and destroy society push them to be a storng ruler. Also, people who under a rule often be familar with their condition and ingnore their status like burmese in the essay.


Why I Write

As we know, George Orwell is not an author who writes about his emotional things and private life. He alway tried to accuse irrationalities of the society. That clearly shown in his essay "why I wirte"
In this essay, he claims "no book is genuinely free from political bias.
I agree with him. Sometimes people want to divide literature into two group - Pure Literature and Politic literature (참여문학). However, even though a writer writes about his first love we can find his political consciousness. If he describes his first lover as a pure and innocent girl and worships her ignorance and navieness, he might has fantasy about virgin which is made by patriarchal system. As like we can find sturcture of society of Victorian age in Jane Austin's novels even she only wrote about girl's life and marriage.

I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose.

1. Sheer egoism.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm.

3. Historical impulse.

4. Political purpose.

... I am a person in whom the first motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descripitve books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pampheteer.

If you want to read full text, click here!  "why I wirte"



More about his novels.

- Animal Farm & 1984
my comment :  his most famous work Animal farm describes dangernousness of totalitarianism.

Story : Animals in a farm start to resist to human to get their right and freedom. They seem beat human  who perscute and exploit animals but soon animals realize that instead of human Pigs get the seat of privilige and betray rest of animal. Pigs reign over other animals and start to develope relationship with human.
 Story : 1984 is a story about future. To us, It's already passed year but to the wirter 1984 meaned far and close future. In this dark future, People are kept under guard - by Big brother- and can't say about their own opinion about everything. What they can do is just accept reality and be royal to Big brother. Hero of this novel realize hypocrisy of party and trys to break away from irrational society.


Animal Farm

Animal Farm is a dystopian allegorical novella by George Orwell. Published in England on 17 August 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell, a democratic socialist and a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as his novel "contre Stalin".
The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, but the subtitle was dropped by the US publishers for its 1946 publication and subsequently all but one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime omitted the addition. Other variations in the title include: A Satire and A Contemporary Satire. Orwell suggested for the French translation the title Union des républiques socialistes animales, recalling the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques, and which abbreviates URSA, which means "bear", a symbol of Russia, in Latin.
Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005); it also places at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is also included in the Great Books of the Western World.
The novel addresses not only the corruption of the revolution by its leaders but also how wickedness, indifference, ignorance, greed and myopia destroy any possibility of a Utopia. While this novel portrays corrupt leadership as the flaw in revolution (and not the act of revolution itself), it also shows how potential ignorance and indifference to problems within a revolution could allow horrors to happen if smooth transition to a people's government isn't satisfied.
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 1984

Nineteen Eighty-Four (sometimes written 1984) is a 1949 dystopian novel by George Orwell about an oligarchical, collectivist society. Life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control. The individual is always subordinated to the state, and it is in part this philosophy which allows the Party to manipulate and control humanity. In the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue, in Newspeak), protagonist Winston Smith is a civil servant responsible for perpetuating the Party's propaganda by revising historical records to render the Party omniscient and always correct, yet his meagre existence disillusions him to the point of seeking rebellion against Big Brother, eventually leading to his arrest, torture, and reconversion.
As literary political fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel of the social science fiction subgenre. Since its publication in 1949, many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, and Memory hole, have become contemporary vernacular. In addition, the novel popularized the adjective Orwellian, which refers to lies, surveillance, or manipulation of the past in the service of a totalitarian agenda.
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<1984 movie trailer from Youtube>