Orwell by Jeffrey Meyers Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeffrey Meyers
do.â In August he announces, rather surprisingly: âI intend getting married again (to Sonia) when I am once again in the land of the living, if I ever am. I suppose everyone will be horrified.â And in October he writes: âI am still very weak & ill, but I think better on the whole. I am getting married very unobtrusively this week. It will probably be a long time before I can get out of bed.â He died three months later, in January 1950.
Future biographers will certainly be interested in Orwell's unusual second marriage, just as Orwell, in discussing Carlyle's marriage, was interested in âthe frame of mind in which people get married, and the astonishing selfishness that exists in the sincerest love.â
The other dominant pattern in Orwell's life (closely related to his illness) is the series of masochistic impulses for a higher cause that testifies to his compulsive need for self-punishment: in school; in the Burmese Police; among scullions and beggars; in squalid doss houses and inside mines; with the ragged, weaponless army of the Republic in Spain; in propagandistic drudgery for the wartime BBC (a âwhoreshop and lunatic asylumâ); in thankless and exhausting political polemics; and finally in that mad and suicidal sojourn amidst the damp, bleak and isolated wastes of Jura. In
Wigan Pier
Orwell states, âI was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiateâ and explains that this guilt derives from his experience as a colonial oppressor. 7 But it seems that the source of this guilt, which he could never extinguish (see his âDiary,â quoted in the epigraph), was both earlier and deeper than Orwell suggests (âSuch, Such Were the Joysâ describes his deep-rooted childhood guilt). Though no specific evidence yet exists, it is possible to imagine an early Lord Jim syndrome, a kind of moral self-betrayal or dishonorable fall from self-esteem that is a truer source of his masochistic guilt. But whatever the source, Orwell's writing is manifest proof of his ability to transcend this personal guilt by channeling it into effective social and political thought and action.
Orwell's books deal with two dominant themesâpoverty and politicsâor as he put it, âthe twin nightmares that beset nearly every modern man, the nightmare of unemployment and the nightmare of State interference.â The autobiographical
Down and Out in Paris and London
(1933), the novels
AClergyman's Daughter
(1935) and
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
(1936), and the reportage
The Road to Wigan Pier
(1937) deal with the first theme;
Burmese Days
(1934),
Homage to Catalonia
(1938),
Animal Farm
(1945) and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) with the second; while
Coming Up For Air
(1939) is a transitional work that concerns an unsuccessful attempt to escape from both nightmares. The rest of this essay concentrates on the first phase of Orwell's career; I do not discuss
A Clergyman's Daughter
, his weakest book.
âWe all live in terror of poverty,â writes Orwell, and its psychological and social effects are his great theme. Though almost all his books treat this question in a significant way (the exploited natives in
Burmese Days
, the plight of the common soldier in
Homage to Catalonia
and of the dehumanized proles in
Nineteen Eighty-Four)
, Orwell's three books of the depressed mid-thirties are completely devoted to the exploration of this theme. Works like
New Grub Street, The Spoils of Poynton, Nostromo, Howards End
and
Major Barbara
all deal, in their different ways, with the corruption of capitalistic society; Orwell's books consider the working classes who are exploited by this corrupt society.
One of Orwell's main ideas can be found in Shaw's Preface to
Major Barbara
(1907): âThe greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.â 8 Shaw, a half-century before Orwell, âwas drawn into the Socialist revival of the early eighties, among
Future biographers will certainly be interested in Orwell's unusual second marriage, just as Orwell, in discussing Carlyle's marriage, was interested in âthe frame of mind in which people get married, and the astonishing selfishness that exists in the sincerest love.â
The other dominant pattern in Orwell's life (closely related to his illness) is the series of masochistic impulses for a higher cause that testifies to his compulsive need for self-punishment: in school; in the Burmese Police; among scullions and beggars; in squalid doss houses and inside mines; with the ragged, weaponless army of the Republic in Spain; in propagandistic drudgery for the wartime BBC (a âwhoreshop and lunatic asylumâ); in thankless and exhausting political polemics; and finally in that mad and suicidal sojourn amidst the damp, bleak and isolated wastes of Jura. In
Wigan Pier
Orwell states, âI was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiateâ and explains that this guilt derives from his experience as a colonial oppressor. 7 But it seems that the source of this guilt, which he could never extinguish (see his âDiary,â quoted in the epigraph), was both earlier and deeper than Orwell suggests (âSuch, Such Were the Joysâ describes his deep-rooted childhood guilt). Though no specific evidence yet exists, it is possible to imagine an early Lord Jim syndrome, a kind of moral self-betrayal or dishonorable fall from self-esteem that is a truer source of his masochistic guilt. But whatever the source, Orwell's writing is manifest proof of his ability to transcend this personal guilt by channeling it into effective social and political thought and action.
Orwell's books deal with two dominant themesâpoverty and politicsâor as he put it, âthe twin nightmares that beset nearly every modern man, the nightmare of unemployment and the nightmare of State interference.â The autobiographical
Down and Out in Paris and London
(1933), the novels
AClergyman's Daughter
(1935) and
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
(1936), and the reportage
The Road to Wigan Pier
(1937) deal with the first theme;
Burmese Days
(1934),
Homage to Catalonia
(1938),
Animal Farm
(1945) and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) with the second; while
Coming Up For Air
(1939) is a transitional work that concerns an unsuccessful attempt to escape from both nightmares. The rest of this essay concentrates on the first phase of Orwell's career; I do not discuss
A Clergyman's Daughter
, his weakest book.
âWe all live in terror of poverty,â writes Orwell, and its psychological and social effects are his great theme. Though almost all his books treat this question in a significant way (the exploited natives in
Burmese Days
, the plight of the common soldier in
Homage to Catalonia
and of the dehumanized proles in
Nineteen Eighty-Four)
, Orwell's three books of the depressed mid-thirties are completely devoted to the exploration of this theme. Works like
New Grub Street, The Spoils of Poynton, Nostromo, Howards End
and
Major Barbara
all deal, in their different ways, with the corruption of capitalistic society; Orwell's books consider the working classes who are exploited by this corrupt society.
One of Orwell's main ideas can be found in Shaw's Preface to
Major Barbara
(1907): âThe greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.â 8 Shaw, a half-century before Orwell, âwas drawn into the Socialist revival of the early eighties, among