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Unit 4: Animal Farm by George Orwell

at Eton that Orwell published his first work in college periodicals. George Orwell decided to Notes
follow family tradition instead of taking a scholarship to a university. In 1922, he went to Burma
and worked there as an assistant district superintendent in the Indian Imperial Police. Orwell
served in several country stations and at first looked to be a model imperial servant. Yet from
childhood he always wanted to become a writer, and when he understood how much against
their will the Burmese were ruled by the British, he felt very ashamed of his role as a colonial
police officer. He later narrated his experiences and his reactions to imperial rule in his
novel Burmese Days and in two brilliant autobiographical sketches, “A Hanging” and “Shooting
an Elephant” which were classics of expository prose.
George Orwell, on leave to England in 1927, decided never to return to Burma, and he resigned
from the imperial police on January 1, 1928. Already in the autumn of 1927 he took a path that
was to shape his character as a writer. Feeling guilty that the barriers of caste and race had
prevented his mixing with the Burmese, he thought he could get rid of some of his guilt by
immersing himself in the life of the outcast and poor people of Europe. Donning shabby clothes,
he went into the East End of London to live in low-priced lodging houses among beggars and
labourers. He also spent some time in the slums of Paris and worked as a dishwasher in French
restaurants and hotels. Orwell also tramped the roads of England with professional beggars and
joined the people of the London slums in their annual exodus to work in the Kentish hopfields.
These experiences gave Orwell enough material to write Down and Out in Paris and
London (1933). In this book real life events are rearranged into something similar to fiction.
Orwell got some initial literary recognition after the book got published in 1933, Burmese
Days (1934), George Orwell’s first novel established the pattern of his subsequent fiction in its
interpretation of a conscientious, sensitive and emotionally isolated person who is at odds with
an insincere and oppressive social environment. The most significant character of Burmese
Days is a minor administrator who tries to escape from the narrow-minded and dull chauvinism
of his fellow British colonialists in Burma. However, his sympathies and considerations for the
Burmese end in an unexpected personal tragedy. The central character of George Orwell’s next
novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), is a sad and unfortunate spinster whose life is turned
upside down when she suffers an attack of amnesia. Keep the Aspidistra Flying, first published
in 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. This book is about a literarily inclined
bookseller’s assistant who hates the empty commercialism and materialism of middle-class life
but in the end is reconciled to bourgeois prosperity by his forced wedding to the girl he loves.
George Orwell’s revolt against imperialism led to his personal rejection of the bourgeois life-
style and also to a political reorientation. Instantly after returning from Burma he started calling
himself an anarchist and continued to do so for many years. During the 1930s, though, he started
considering himself a socialist, although he was too libertarian in his thinking ever to take the
further step which is common in the period in which he declared himself a communist.
George Orwell’s first ever socialist book was an unorthodox, original political treatise called The
Road to Wigan Pier (1937). It starts by unfolding his experiences during his stay with the poor
and jobless mineworkers of northern England. He lived with them and observed their lives. The
book ends in a series of sharp criticisms of prevailing socialist movements. The book includes
mordant reporting with a tone of plentiful anger that was to describe George Orwell’s subsequent
text.
When The Road to Wigan Pier was being printed, George Orwell was in Spain. Orwell went to
Spain to report on the Civil War and stayed there to become a part of the Republican militia,
serving on the Aragon and Teruel fronts and he got the rank of second lieutenant. He was
seriously injured at Teruel. Orwell’s throat got damaged permanently affecting his voice and
giving his speech a strange, convincing softness. In May 1937, after fighting in Barcelona against
communists who tried overpowering their political opponents, Orwell with the fear of losing

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