NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Orwell was influenced by many things including events his life and the idea of totalitarianism. Theseinfluenced his writing of the book 1984. Orwell began life with the name of Eric Blair. Blairknew by the time he was four or five that he wanted to be awaited. Like his character in Winston Smith in 1984, he thought of himself as an outsider and a rebel.
He told one childhood friend: You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right side up. (Evans 20) At eighth was packed off to boarding school at St. Cypariaus where was more an outsider than ever, as a lone scholarship student among wealthy children. The schoolmaster and his wife used kicks and caresses to keep the boys in line. This was Blair s first taste of an absolute power (Evans 20).
Orwell transfers those feelings to Winston, who in 1984 finds himself trapped in a harsh totalitarian system. Later Orwell wrote that during his first twenty-five years he was writing, and living, a continuing story in his head. He began as a Robin Hood type figure, starring in imaginary adventures. Later he became a careful observer. This seems very like Winston in 1984 who commits crimes in his head while outwardly obeying party orders (Calder 15).
In the years immediately following World War I, he was part of the antinomian movement at Ton, committed to overturning current standards and belief. When his classmates went on to Oxford or Cambridge, Blair was faced with a decision. He could not afford to go to a university and his grades kept him from winning any more scholarships. He may have been sick of studying (Evans 15).
So he decided to join the Indian Imperial Police, a British force assigned to keep order in British dependencies. This pleased his father, who had rejoined the family in England. With the blessing of the family, Blair went out to Burma for a five year period (Bloom 10). Blair hated the police and everything they stood for; he often hated the people he was supposed to help, and he hated the things he was called upon do in the name of his country. He felt isolated, lonely and deserted. Orwell later claimed that his spell in Burmaruined his health.
His lungs had always troubled him, and 1927 he was sent back to England on a convalescent leave. That year he resigned from the police and dedicated himself to becoming a writer. His father never quite forgave him (15). Blair decided to go down and out, partly because has trying to gather material, and partly because he wanted to erase the guilt and disgust he felt for serving in the Indian Imperial Police and for being a member of the privileged class. He bought tramps clothes from ascend-hand store and began a five-year period in which helped, off and on, among tramps in flophouses. He took odd jobs and lived on pennies, first in London and then in Paris.
Although he had begun to write for periodicals, he eventually ran out of money. Broke and desperate, he ended up with pneumonia in the paupers ward in a French hospital (Evans 13). During this period, Blair learned what life warlike for the underclass desperate people with little hope for a decent future. Unlike them, however, he had a comfortable home to retreat to. Writing about his experiences, Blair did what most good writers do: he transformed and fused what had happened to him to build a coherent story.
Then on paper he became George Orwell (Stanley 9). If Eric Blair was the little boy who was lonely at school and who, in Burma, did things he was not proud of, George Orwell was the writer with a cause. In Burma he had learned what evils an absolute government can do even when it s trying to help people. His down and out days had taught him class divisions and the horrors of poverty. Living among the poor in Northern England, he underwent a socialist conversion (Evans 15). Meanwhile, idealists from all over the world were going to Spain to help the new government, which had only recently taken the place of a monarchy.
They saw Franco s fascists as threatening the cause of freedom and democracy everywhere. In Germany, the Nazi party under Adolph Hitler was in complete power. Hitler was rattling his weapons, preparing a bid to take over Europe. In Russia the people s revolution had done away with the czarist ruling class, but under Stalin, the Communist government threatened the freedom of the people. Stalin was engaged in purging his enemies from the party.
Both these totalitarian powers were now aiding Franco. Orwell saw this as an opportunity thrive out his ideals and went to Spain to fight for the Popular Front government (Rai 38). The political thicket that Orwell waded into was so complex that historians are still trying to untangle it (38). There were several parties fighting Franco; alliances kept changing. Orwell was excited by what appeared to be a classless society in Barcelona. To help preserve it, he joined one of the splinter parties fighting Franco and went to the front tonight.
By the time he returned to Barcelona six months later, the party which he had joined was out of favor and he was indulger of being purged. Riots and street fighting raged. Although it would be eight years before Orwell found the vocabulary to transform the nightmare into a novel, these experiences paved the way to 1984 (Evans 32). Orwell was convinced that Stalinism, which purged political enemies for the good of the state, was as dangerous as Nazism. He was also sure that he must fuse his politics and his art (Rai 25). Orwell was a democratic Socialist who believed in a centralized government that would take over such things as medical care and running the railroads for the good of the people, bringing benefits total.
At the same time, he believed this government should run by the people. This was, he believed the fine line Great Britain must tread doing what was best for the people without hampering their freedom (Calder 35). Meanwhile, Hitler marched on Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France. Britain s entry into World War II in 1940 was inevitable and marked the end of Orwell s brief period as a pacifist. Later Orwell wrote propaganda for the BBC, an education in how to know one thing yet say another for thurgood of the people. This training foreshadowed Winston so in the Ministry of Truth (35).
England was under attack air, and buzz bombs, Nazi V- 2 rockets exploded on London almost daily until the war ended. Every day people lived with death and danger and shortages of food and clothing. Russia, which had begun as Germany s ally, took arms against Hitler, grappling with the Nazis at Stalingrad. History, then, laid the groundwork for 1984, in which major powerware always at war but the enemy keeps changing (Rai 48). Orwell wanted 1984 to be a show up of the perversions to which a centralized society is liable, and which have already been realized in Communism and Fascism (50). He feared for Britain.
Orwell had broken his health but had finished the novel that would outlive him by generations (Chilton 26). Hospitalized, Orwell saw the novel published in 1949. It was widely praised in a postwar world that was awakened to the realities of the Cold War in which there are no friends, only friendly enemies (Rai 15). 1984 was taken as a chilling warning by readers who lived in the daily possibility of absolute nuclear destruction, a possibility which had been raised by the explosion of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in thelist days of World War II (Chilton 28). Orwell was influenced by many things including events his life and the idea of totalitarianism. Theseinfluenced his writing of the book 1984.
Free research essays on topics related to: george orwell, year period, orwell wrote, world war ii, five year
Research essay sample on World War Ii Orwell Wrote
