1984. Animal Farm

Author: (British) Orwell, translated by Dong Leshan and Fu Weici
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-10-01
Features: A series of re-reading Western classic literary masterpieces, collecting the classic works of famous writers in the contemporary world literary scene. The selected works are all the outstanding masterpieces of different periods in the world literary arena. These works help Chinese readers improve their literary literacy while understanding the schools and styles of contemporary world literature, and contribute to our exchange and learning from world civilization. Before writing 1984 in 1948, George Orwell was a poor and obscure writer in Britain. Although 1984 was published shortly before his death from tuberculosis in 1950, he did not live to see the fame it brought him as both a uniquely styled novelist and a visionary political prophet. Since then, his name has occupied an important and unique place in the history of English literature. The terms he created in his novels, such as "Big Brother," "doublethink," and "Newspeak," have been included in authoritative English dictionaries, and even an adjective "Orwellian" derived from his surname has frequently appeared in the pens of journalists reporting international news, a rare honor for other writers. If not unique, then what kind of writer was Orwell, and what was 1984, his timeless masterpiece, really like? To answer this question, it is best to start by examining what Orwell was not, or what 1984 was not. This might help us better understand him and his work. First, it must be pointed out that Orwell was not an anti-communist in the conventional sense, and 1984 was not a simple anti-Soviet work. As Simon Leys, a renowned critic and professor of Sinology at the School of Asian Studies, Australian National University, noted in his 1983 essay Orwell: Political Terror, "Many readers view Orwell from the perspective of Reader's Digest: in all his works, they retain only 1984, cherry-pick from it, and reduce it to a mere pamphlet against communism. For their own convenience, they ignore the fact that Orwell's struggle against authoritarianism was driven by his belief in socialism." Therefore, in Leys' view, Orwell was first and foremost a socialist, and secondarily an anti-totalitarianist. He believed that "his struggle against totalitarianism was an inevitable consequence of his socialist beliefs. He believed that only by defeating totalitarianism could socialism triumph." 1984 is more than a novel that satirizes the Soviet Union; rather, it is more accurately described as a prophecy against totalitarianism. However, whether he believed in socialism or opposed totalitarianism, Orwell did not arrive at this position until later in his life. Orwell came from a British middle-class family, but his upbringing was not affluent. His father worked for the British colonial government in India, and as a junior official, he could not afford to send his son to an elite boarding school in Britain. Orwell only attended a second-rate boarding school, St. Cyprian's, for free due to his excellent academic performance, and later won a scholarship to attend Britain's most prestigious public school, Eton. However, as a poor student, he first faced discrimination from the headmaster and later felt alienated from the aristocratic students there. After graduation, without connections to the upper class or financial support from his family, he could not afford university and had to leave for Burma to serve in the imperial police force, but even the life of a colonial junior official felt alien to him. Despite this background, as Orwell himself put it, "I experienced poverty and the feeling of failure. This increased my natural hatred for authority," but he had also received a traditional British education, so he was initially very non-political in his stance and thought. For example, in his novel Burmese Days, set in a colonial society, he treated both the British and the Burmese with equal indifference. This reminds one of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. Forster once wrote, "Most Indians, like most Englishmen, are bastards." This traditional upper-class education left a deep class imprint on Orwell, as vulgar sociological clichés would put it, which was the main reason he struggled to find his "identity" politically. True, during his school days, he suffered humiliation at the hands of the snobbish headmaster of St. Cyprian's due to his family's financial constraints (see Such, Such Were the Days, published after his death, which prepared him psychologically to later develop a sense of injustice toward colonial rule in Burma and eventually fully immerse himself in standing with the oppressed. However, he was after all from the middle class, and in Britain, a society with deeply entrenched class boundaries, it was difficult for him to break free from the constraints of this tradition. Orwell was no exception, and he remained aware of this until his death. On the other hand, he found his boarding school life extremely unpleasant. He once wrote, "There is nothing more cruel to a child than sending him to a school for the rich. The suffering of a child who is aware of his poverty, caused by vanity, is something adults cannot imagine." This psychological trauma from his youth continued to bleed in the adult Orwell, as seen in his unpleasantly nostalgic Such, Such Were the Days. More than one critic has suggested reading Such, Such Were the Days alongside 1984. Leys, for instance, believed that "Orwell likely found the microcosmic embryo of his later great nightmare in the preparatory school he attended." Orwell once told a friend, Toc H. Feivel, "The suffering of a misfit at a boarding school may be the only thing in Britain that can compare to the isolation a foreigner feels in a totalitarian society." Feivel observed in Such, Such Were the Days that the life of a British boarding school provided some of the voices, scenes, and smells for 1984. "Orwell showed an early sensitivity to ugly or hostile environments. This is evident in his description of the repulsive aspects of life at St. Cyprian's. He recalled the stale porridge served in greasy bowls, the dirty water in the communal baths, the hard, uneven beds, the sweaty changing rooms, the lack of personal privacy, the row of unlocked, filthy outhouses, the constant slamming of toilet doors, and the sound of urine splashing in chamber pots in the dorms. When he recalled all this with his characteristic delicate perception, we can almost see that Orwell's description of St. Cyprian's served as a practice run for the grim scenes in 1984."