GEORGE ORWELL (31 january 2004)
In yesterday's weblog about Nineteen Eighty-Four, you may have missed discussions about important features, such as Newspeak and the Thought Police.
That's true, but all I wanted to present was a general impression of the book. An exhaustive discussion would be too much for a simple weblog as this.
Still, it may be interesting to have a look at the life of author, George Orwell. As I mentioned yesterday, his real name was Eric Blair, but here we'll call him by his writer's name, George Orwell.
George
Orwell
Orwell did not become very old. In 1950, not long after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, he died at the age of 46.
During a large part of the time that Orwell was writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, he was hospitalized for tuberculosis. He was treated with streptomycin, which was recently discovered. So the treatment with this drug was in an experimental stage and Orwell suffered from very severe side-effects.
At the hospital, Orwell was considered too weak to write. Consequently, he was not allowed to use a typewriter. In Orwell's letters you'll often read that he asks his relatives to send him biros. The word biro comes from the Hungarian brothers Laszlo and George Biro, who had invented the pen in 1940. Later the pen would become better known under the name of ballpoint pen.
Apart from Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell is widely known for his novel Animal Farm. Maybe less well-known are his other four novels:
Many people will consider Orwell a novelist, but the greater part of his work consists of essays. Although they were written more than half a century ago, many would still be relevant today, for instance: Orwell was a socialist - although he was not too happy with the British socialist party - which he considered more a trades union.You may have heard about writers and other celebrities who went to Cuba, East-Germany or Palestine to show their engagement. Orwell may definitely not be called an armchair socialist: in 1936 he went to fight against Franco in Spain.
And if you're still not convinced of Orwell's socialism, read The Road To Wigan Pier or Down And Out In Paris And London, and you will feel Orwell's real engagement with the less fortunate!
