***The pdf version of the presentation is available here***

 

Interview

 

Today, we have a very special guest here to talk about his writing career and life; please welcome George Orwell!

 

Thank you for having me.

 

Now before we begin, could you tell us a little bit about your early life and history.

 

Well, my name in not actually George Orwell. It’s Eric Arthur Blair. The former was just a pseudonym I used. I was born June 25, 1903, in India. You see, my father was a British civil servant stationed there along with my mother, thus my location of birth. However, I didn’t know my father terribly well, as my mother and sister had taken me back to England in my first year, and it wasn’t till I was of 9 years that my father retired. Even after that, I found the man too dull to form a true bond with. I was enlisted into a boarding school in 1911, but hated the experience, as I noticed the teachers treated the richer children better than the poor. I kept to my books, and ended up winning scholarships. At Eton University, I completed my courses, but couldn’t afford for any more education, so I enlisted in the Imperial Police.

 

Where did your desire to become a writer fit into all of this?

 

Well, as a child I suffered from illness regularly, so I did what any lonely sick child would do: write poetry. My first poem was written when I was four years old. At 11 years old, one of my poems got published in the newspaper. At school, I stuck to my books instead of making friends. After I left the police force, I struggled financially, publishing my first book based upon the hardship that the working poor endured. To save my family from embarrassment of a disappointing son, I used the pseudonym of George Orwell. Soon after, I started to enjoy writing about politics and the Imperialism of the Brits. I even fought in the Spanish Revolution after meeting my first wife. Afterwards, I joined with the BBC, or British Broadcasting Company and reported the news until after WWII, as my constant spouting of British propaganda was obnoxious. All in all, I wanted to make change.

 

I see. Could you tell us a little about your writing style?

 

Well in my writing, I make sure to be heavy on the imagery so that the reader has a clear image of what is going on and can picture it in their heads. I also switch between paragraphs of short yet descriptive sentences, to long run-on ramblings. Both types, in my opinion, force the reader to pay attention to what is being said or what is happening, as any little detail serves to heighten the plot and tension.

 

Interesting. Can I ask what authors inspired your writing as well as your style?

 

I would have to say the authors whose books I read while I was in school, namely Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells.

 

Before we leave, have you any last words to the audience?

 

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

 

Thank you so much Mr. Orwell. Round of applause!

 

Quick Summary

• born Eric Arthur Blair, June 25, 1903, in Bengal, India.
• Pursued writing from a young age, but not occupationally until after the Spanish Civil War
• Struggled with the ideas of disparity between classes, and how poorly the working class was treated.
• Joined socialist newspaper for editing after quitting the BBC for its propaganda and government control.
• He died on January 21, 1950, in a London hospital due to tuberculosis.

 

Works

In total, George Orwell has written 18 published poems and 10 published novels. On top of this, Orwell has also written news articles for different papers, as well as propaganda pamphlets during wartime.

The works that we read are his two most famous novels: Animal Farm and 1984. Both are political fictions about government rule and the true ideal of equality. We’ve all read Animal Farm as a novel study, so I”m sure we’re familiar with the plot. The novel was a satire of Soviet beliefs and the issue with Communism, as the barnyard animals reflect both Stalin and Trotsky.

1984 is a dystopian novel about how the government controls everything, including your very thoughts, and talks about the role of individuality in a truly equal society.

 

Style

Orwell uses a lot of imagery in his writing, so much so that its difficult not being able to picture what’s going on. Of course, this hypotyposis can have drawbacks, as the descriptions get long and almost monotonous. We also noticed that Orwell uses either very long, run on sentences, or very short and concise ones. Of course these sentences don’t lack detail, as he is always describing what is happening. The short sentences usually follow each other in succession, while the long sentences are a bit farther spaced out in the text. This is evident in these examples on the board here. He also usually puts in moral dilemma into the characters. In 1984, this is seen through the protagonist’s struggle for individualism against the ever present watching government, and in Animal Farm, this is seen when the animals split away from the pigs as they become fat and greedy due to their Stalinist belief.

 

Themes and Genres 

Orwell’s most predominant genres that he worked and wrote in are:

 

Political Fiction
Poetry
Fiction
Dystopian Novel
Roman à clef (Roman a clef is french for “novel with a key.” It really just means a novel about real life, but disguised with a facade of fiction.)

 

The main themes in his books consist of :

 

Totalitarianism
Disparity vs. Equality
Love & Sexuality
Independence vs. Loyalty
Poverty vs. Wealth
Manipulation
Language
Appearance vs. Reality

Emulation 

 

“A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats.” Orwell, 1984

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.” -Orwell, Animal Farm

My Emulation:

It was almost impossible to listen to him without being maddened, as with each passing word, poison seeped from his lips, down his wrinkled jaw and seeped into the cracks of the very foundation of the world. Like a bubonic fertilizer, from these nooks and crannies sprouted the very words that were planted into the young minds, the feeble minds. Don’t misunderstand, these weeds aren’t new, they’ve always hidden deep under the world, waiting for the right moment to grow, to fester, and spread like a plague. His voice like the thunder of horse hooves, and on the horizon the unknown wave of conquest, of war, and of sickness only grows stronger, with the only true outcome being the Pale Horse: Death. Timeless are his words, as they echo to an unspeakable past where banners of hate, and words of a bigot were accepted as sane. But who is the insane one: he who spouts nonsense, or the one who normalizes insanity. For the very definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over again, expecting things to change, yet here we are, 20 claims of sexual assault in and our Rumpelstiltskin still sits on a throne. If I can promise you one thing, it’s every great empire in history has fallen. If I can promise you anything it’s that poisons lose their potency, The Dram of Evil is no different. So listen well, to the every words that spit and sputter toxins into our ears, for only then may we truly fight an infection that must be stopped from spreading.

 

6 Pieces of Advice

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

 

Conclusion

My Conclusion: What I’ve learnt from Orwell is how timeless the issue of political Big Brother is, seeing as how applicable it is to the current state of the U.S. What’s important as a writer is to question everything, and even then, not stop until you have all of the facts.in our writing we need to not be afraid to challenge the status quo, and to push forth questioning into shady government or authority actions, so that we may benefit our society. Without individual thought, we’d all be mindless slaves.