George Orwell - THE LIFE, SOCIAL THEMES, 1984, Homage to Catalonia (omaggio alla Catalogna), Animal Farm (la fattoria degli animali)

George Orwell

THE LIFE

REAL NAME: Eric Blair

BIRTH: in india in 1903 (his father was an English minor colonial official)

EDUCATION: first in england at St. Cyprian's preparatory school and after to Eaton.

PERSONALITY: could not stand discipline, independent, indifferent to accept values

COLONIAL EXPERIENCE: in Burma as an officier in the Indian Imperial Police; developed an anti-imperialistic attitude

OTHER IMPORTANT EXPERIENCES: social experiment of poverty; stay in Paris; fought in  the Spanish Civil War; broadcast for the BBC; was the editor of a socialist weekly.

CHOICE OF PSEUDONYM "George" was very English and suggested common sense; "Orwell" was the name of his fauvorite river.

REPUTATIONS: internationally known thanks to Animal Farm.

DEATH: of tubercolos in 1950.

SOCIAL THEMES

He was a prolific book-rewiewer, critic, political journalist and pamphleteer in the tradition of the author Swift and Defoe. His themes  was a vision of human fraternity, the misery, the poverty and deprivation. He insisted on tolerance, justice and decency in human relatioship againist the violation of liberty and helping his readers to recognise tyranny in all its forms.

First that he died he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, his most original novel published in 1949 and soon became a best-seller.

SOME OF HIS BOOKS

The novel describes a future England, no longer the head of an Empire, but an outpost of Oceania, a vast totalitarian system including noth America and the British Empire, and extending over a third of the globe.

The work is divided into three parts:

PART ONE:

introduces the main character, Winston Smith, in the context of a regimented, oppressive world:

PERT TWO:

describes his love for Julia and the temporary happiness their relationship bring to both;

PART THREE:

deals with Winston's imprisonment and torture by the Thought Police, and the final loss of intellectual integrity.

DOUBLETHINK(bispensiero):

A philosophy by wich one thing is considered true as well as its contraty.

In the book everybody had to get used to 'doublethink' for instance previous enemy country coul be considered a friend country since the beginning if things had changed.

It means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.

NEWSPEAK(neolingua):

the aim o newspeak was to cancel the possibility to express ideas by restricting language and cancelling words wich might make people think of their own rights.

It want to cancel freedom of thriught by restricting the possibility to conceive and express ideas.

WAR IS PEACE(la guerra è pace):

the war was a normal condition of life.

They don't know the real mean of PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY(la libertà è schiavitù):

It was impossible to think and do what they want, the law punish allt this things.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH(l'ignoranza è forza):

It's strength because they don't know what life before 'big brother' was, they accept all the restrictions imposed and they don't know theyr rights and what is freedom.

BIG BROTHER CONDITIONS:

every citizen was spy by a telescreen

Winston and Julia represent two different ways to cope with the system.

He hides to the Big Brother while she use some kind of strategy not to be discovered.

THE END: the Heroes being discovered and surrended and Winston will being erase.

This book inspirated the new italian big brother.

Homage to Catalonia (omaggio alla Catalogna)

He published this book in 1938 in Barcelona after that he joined the party POUM(Worker's Party of Marxist Unification).

He was to recall this experience as the time of his true conversion to socialism an the ideals of proderhood and equality.

Animal Farm (la fattoria degli animali)

He published in 1945 just when the Iron Curtain was beginning to fall on Eastern Europe. This book made Orwell intenationally known.

In this farm one day the animal took power on the humans.

It's not a childhood book but this hides political themes.

Coming up for air (una boccata d'aria)

He decided to back in the lake where he born but he found only smog. He was the firs to affront ambiental problems.

Keep the Aspidistra flying (fiorirà l'aspidistria)

He always was sensible to the social problems because of the period he spent in India Orwell felt a sense of pity for the poor.

In the meantime he was aware to belong to the aristocratie society he met at Eaton.

The Aspidistra is call the folwer of misery because it grown up everywhere. In all this thesgrace and in a hoplessness situation this flower bring a hope.