George Orwell; A Political and Historical Impact

George Orwell was shaped by his experience in the Spanish Civil war and by watching

the way the revolution evolved in Russia and then the Soviet Union. He was concerned, as so

many in the West were, about the rise of Stalin and what he saw as a "cult of personality" being

raised around him (eNotes). This danger only appeared to increase as Stalin consolidated his

power during the second world war. George Orwell describes Animal Farm as his first effort to

use a novel to try and accomplish a political aim. He was proud of the way he was able to

combine the two elements into this very unforgettable and significant story. Especially, he felt it

was a better representation of the Soviet Union and Stalin than what was widely accepted in

Britain at the time he wrote it. He desired to push back against the positive image of Stalin held

by some of the bureaucrats and leaders in the government. George Orwell, a foremost political

journalist and novelist was able to provide a remarkable example of a writer whose legacy has

been acquired from a host of contending political scrutiny.

The main theme that George Orwell mostly wrote on was Totalitarianism. Most of the

time, George Orwell wrote based on personal experience. He was a writer who came of age in

the period between the two world wars, Orwell was primarily a journalist and essayist. Upper-

class by education, middle-class by background, his sense of responsibility for poverty and

inequality motivated him to write. He was a compulsively autobiographical writer, interested in

exploring his own emotions (Meyers). George Orwell's Illnesses Influenced '1984' The gloomy

stories of George Orwell were likely influenced by the writer's own ailments, including

tuberculosis and infertility, according to a new study. Like in his nonfiction work Down and Out

in London and Paris, he describes his experience tramping around England and France. He took
low-paying jobs requiring very long hours, was unemployed at other times, and once slept on the

beach to dodge a landlord. Mr. Orwell also served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, which

gave him a chance to see imperial and racial politics first-hand.

Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. Propaganda has

been used as a way of eliminating the dirty tricks used by the government and those in power to

advance their selfish ideals. Deliberate attempts to destroy the past and present through

manipulative tactics is another thematic presentation that raises an argumentative view of the

book by George Orwell. Another analytical argument to the propagandas introduced by the

government according to Orwell is mistrust between families and use of technology for spying

(UKessays). In 1943, Orwell became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine

(BBC). By now he was a prolific journalist, writing articles, reviews and books. Animal Farm,

his bitter satire of the Soviet experiment, was written by the middle of 1944. Publishers’ timidity,

and the covert pressure exerted by a Russian spy working for the Ministry of Information,

delayed its appearance until August 1945. In 1945, Orwell's 'Animal Farm' was published.

Though Orwell acknowledged that he had been a propagandist, he also gave the impression that

he had desired the more distasteful aspects of war propaganda, which he had constantly decried

(Fleay).

George Orwell’s understanding was shaped by personal experiences. According to the

Guardian, there were three personal experiences that helped shape his understanding, the first

was his job as a British imperial policeman for five years in Burma. He was the servant of an

oppressive, though not a totalitarian regime. He then went to living the “down-and-outs” in Paris

and in England, which is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell,

published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. Then the
last was the Spanish civil war. Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the

Republicans against Franco's Nationalists. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-

backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The experience

turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist. His experience in Spain consists of getting a bullet

through his throat and fighting fascism.

According to the BBC, Orwell was typically English in his love of the countryside and in

his Protestant conscience, which made him angry at injustice and concerned for the plight of the

poor, even if he was a firm rationalist and unbeliever. And he was English in his forthright

outspokenness - 'liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear'. His Englishness was not,

however, that of the upper classes; it belonged to the radical tradition of Cobbett, Blake, Bunyan

and the Levellers. His mastery of the plain style of writing and personal unconcern for anything

other than a plain style of living was all of a piece with the ordinary people whom he wished to

reach in his writing, in the tradition of Wells and Dickens rather than modern and now

postmodern novelists.

George Orwell, a foremost political journalist and novelist was able to provide a

remarkable example of a writer whose legacy has been claimed from a host of contending

political scrutiny. For those in the political frontier, George Orwell was known as the most

influential and prescient political writer of the 20th century. Most people read him because of his

historical impact. Up until 1989, the reason to read him on politics was because he captured the

essence of totalitarianism (Guardian News). George Orwell did not just equip writers to detect

semantic abuse, he also suggests how writers can fight back. Orwell both tells and shows how

political writers should be the window cleaners of freedom.

Ash, Timothy Garton. “Orwell for Our Time.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media,

5 May 2001,

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 C. Fleay and M. L. Sanders Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 24, No. 3 (Jul. 1989),

pp. 503-518

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“George Orwell.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Dec. 2019,

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“History - Historic Figures: George Orwell (1903 - 1950).” BBC, BBC,

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Meyers V. (1991) Orwell’s Life and Work: The Political Context. In: George Orwell.

Macmillan Modern Novelists. Palgrave, London

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