George Orwell (1903-1950), whose
real name was Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Motihari in Bengal, where his
father was employed in the Indian Civil Service. There he spent his childhood
until 1907, when he moved with his family to England.
From when he was a small child he
thought about becoming a writer and he later linked this initial aspiration to
his sense of isolation and the idea of being undervalued that was with him
until adolescence. After he finished his studies in the prestigious Eton
School, where he gained admittance with a scholarship, he gave up university to
enroll in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. In 1929, after about five years’
service he left and returned to Europe to begin his career as a writer.
For many years writing novels gave
him no economic security and it was only in 1945, with the publication of Animal Farm, that he achieved
international fame and the financial security which would allow him to write
exclusively what he wanted. In fact, during the previous years he had earned a
living by doing journalistic work for various magazines and working on programmes
for the BBC, and before that he was a pot washer in Paris, he had been a shop
assistant in a London bookshop, he had taught in private schools, for a short
period he had managed a shop, he had been a day labourer in the hop fields and
he had even wandered with beggars.
This list of activities does not
only suggest the precariousness which Orwell, like many writers, personally
lived through at the start of his literary career, but also an intense personal
interest in sharing and personally experiencing the living conditions of the
poorest walks of life. The assiduous analysis of the myths of the bourgeoisie
and the tormented understanding of poor and exploited people’s drama clearly
marks Orwell’s intellectual inner journey; but despite the constant political
references, he didn’t reduce his work to these themes.
Many left-wing commentators have
criticised Orwell for having a humanistic rather than “scientific” view of
socialism. However, many years later it can be said that the Orwellian
conception does not only reflect one of socialism’s best “souls”, but it is
also a reading of human problems that goes beyond
political classification. Even if Orwell claimed to have written “lifeless books”
when they were lacking a clear political intention (1), he always highlighted the interweaving between social
conformity and the internal conflicts of the individual. In 1948, faced
with the second draft of his final novel, 1984,
Orwell wrote to George Woodcock convinced that a solitude was present in the
lives of humans that was irreducible to socially defined external circumstances
(2); we can think of this affirmation as the first indication of the fact that
humans, in the Orwellian understanding, are not as much social animals as they
are people inserted into social reality. In this respect, Orwell was not only
one of the first left-wing intellectuals to denounce Stalinism: on one hand he
denounced totalitarianism in its historic manifestations and its potential
developments, and on the other hand he described with a keen eye the factors
that can make people accomplices to social authoritarianism.
Totalitarianism does not consist in
the simple negation of individual freedom, but also in the capacity to
condition people in such a way that they do not desire to exercise freedom. For
Orwell, purely political opposition to totalitarianism was destined to fail and
the left-wing intellectuals were making the mistake of being antifascist
without being anti-totalitarian (3), because they did not understand that
totalitarianism is not only violent in what it stands against. It not only forbids
you to express –even to think- certain thoughts, but it dictates what you shall think, it creates an ideology for you,
it tries to govern your emotional life as well as setting up a code of conduct.
And, as far as possible it isolates you from the outside world, it shouts you
up in an artificial universe in which you
have no standards of comparison. The totalitarian state tries, at any
rate, to control the thoughts and emotions of it subjects at least as
completely as it controls their actions” (4).
In this deep understanding of the
possibilities of psychological manipulation from the totalitarian state, the
real uniqueness of 1984, Orwell’s
most famous novel, must be identified. In the science fiction nightmare that he
describes, the authorities of Oceana are programmatically orientated towards
imposing a language unfit for the critical potentiality of thought. Therefore the
authorities try to make the human mind become accustomed to indifference
towards the logical contradictions that characterise the political propaganda
of Big Brother, and tries to channel individuals’ emotions in the only
direction that can be used for the reproduction of social order. Orwell
presented mental processes and linguistic structures functional in social
totalitarian irrationality so accurately that 1984 became an obligatory reference in studies on interpersonal
communication.
So far we have only identified the
first part of the Orwellian conception of totalitarianism: the argument which
describes the how it manipulates as well as represses the masses. Orwell also
noticed that individuals are actually a fertile ground for the seed of social
irrationality to grow. This second part of the Orwellian conception states that
totalitarianism does not create passive attitudes out of nothing, but it
activates them by relying on people’s unconscious terror for their autonomy of
judgement and expression. In other words, people want some degree of social
control just to stay mentally and emotionally closed.
Orwell never discussed in detail the
theories relating to personality formation but he showed that he clearly
understood various defensive psychological tendencies in people: “Hitler,
because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows
that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours,
hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least
intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags
and loyalty-parades. (…) All three of the great
dictators have enhanced their power by imposing
intolerable burdens on their
peoples” (5)
It was precisely because of this
type of analysis that Orwell’s position proved to be particularly inconvenient
in left-wing areas, given that he presented individuals, as well as being victims of totalitarianism, as its potential creators.
Aware of his own isolation, Orwell did not give up criticising the short-sightedness
of the purely political objections to totalitarianism, maintaining that they
did not adequately prevent the possibility of authoritarian development within
the same left-wing political organisations.
For Orwell, sexual repression is
associated with the culture of totalitarian system, not simply in moralism, but
as a general programme of repression of individuality and impoverishment both
in its critical and emotional capacity. Totalitarianism blocks the spontaneous
pursuit of pleasure and sexual intimacy, but it encourages aseptically
procreative sexuality, prostitution and pornography. For Orwell,
totalitarianism has to paralyse all possible natural impulses (6): an intense
and fluid emotional life, which can be seen in the “grace” of bodily movements,
makes an inner sense of freedom possible, while emotional and sexual misery
makes individuals feel they have no dignity and that they need to belong to a
group represented by authority.
Orwell highlights the fact that
strong destructive elements are present in all political orders and that the
irrational and authoritarian tendencies can exist in the same people who are
politically committed to democracy, freedom and socialism. However, even if we
cannot free ourselves from this burden with only reason, such emotional
tendencies must be contrasted with a lucid “acceptance of reality” (7).
Not many of the people who have
studied Orwell have recognised that Orwell’s perception went beyond the
political and social level. Bernard Crick states that even if Orwell’s work was
not always directly political at a level of the subjects dealt with, he always
expressed a political awareness (8). More explicitly Keith Aldritt maintained
that the Orwell’s political conception was created and maintained by a strong
moral aim. In this way, George Orwell would have forcibly transformed Eric
Blair, who was fundamentally inclined to grasp the elements of the crisis of
individual existence, in accordance with the widespread tendency of writers at
the time (9).
Actually, there are moral ideals
present in Orwell, but in particular there is the perception for people’s deep
need to understand reality and establish close and emotionally deep bonds.
Even if the debates on Orwell have
almost exclusively highlighted his contributions to the critical reflections on
society, I think that we have to highlight Orwell’s constant attention to both the authoritarian tendencies of society
and people’s irrational and defensive psychological tendencies has to be
highlighted.
Notes
1.Why I Write, CEJL, vol. I, p.30
2. Letter to George Woodcock,
in CEJL, vol. IV, p. 480
3. Arthur Koestler, in
CEJL, vol. III, p. 273
4. Literature and Totalitarism,
in CEJL, vol. II, p.162
5. Review - Mein Kampf by Adolf
Hitler, in CEJL, vol. II, p. 29
6. 1984, p. 91
7. Notes on Nationalism, in
CEJL, vol. III, pp. 430-431
8. Crick, 1982, p. 16
9. Alldritt, 1969, pp.176-177
Bibliography
K. Alldritt, 1969, The making of George Orwell,
Edward Arnold Ltd., London
B. Crick, 1982, George Orwell – A Life, Penguin
Books Ltd., Harmondsworth
G. Orwell, 1933, Down and Out in Paris and London, Ita. trans. Senza un soldo da Parigi a Londra, Mondadori, Milano, 1981
G. Orwell, 1934, Burmese Days, Ita. trans. Giorni in Birmania, Longanesi, Milano, 1975
G. Orwell, 1935, A Clergyman's Daughter, Ita. trans. La figlia del reverendo, Garzanti, Milano, 1976
G. Orwell, 1936, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Ita. trans. Fiorirà l'aspidistra, Mondadori,Milano, 1975
G. Orwell, 1937, The Road to Wigan Pier, Ita. trans. La strada di Wigan Pier, Mondadori, Milano, 1982
G. Orwell, 1938, Homage to Catalonia, Ita. trans. Omaggio alla Catalogna, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1975
G. Orwell, 1939, Comung up for Air, Ita. trans. Una boccata d'aria, Mondadori, Milano, 1966
G. Orwell, 1945, Animal Farm, Ita. trans. La fattoria degli animali, Mondadori, Milano, 1977
G. Orwell, 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ita. trans, 1984, Mondadori, Milano,
1976
G. Orwell (CEJL) - The Collected Essays, Journalism and
Letters of George Orwell, Penguin
Books Ldt., 1970:
Vol. 1 (1920-1940), An Age Like This, reprinted 1982
Vol. 2 (1940-1943), My Country Right or Left,
reprinted 1980
Vol. 3 (1943-1945), As I Please, reprinted 1982
Vol. 4 (1945-1950), In Front of Your Nose, reprinted
1980
