Claire Hines Year 11
George Orwell is a world-famous author renowned for his political fables “Animal farm” and “1984” amongst others, and is recognized as one of the greatest British authors of all time. He was born in Bengal in India in 1903, and died in London in 1950 at the age of 47 of severe tuberculosis provoked by the throat wound he had received when fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
In his first novel “Burmese Days”, he recounts his view of the British colonization of Burma where he himself worked for several years as a colonial police officer. In this work he criticizes the treatment of the natives and the reality behind the ideal of colonization through the eyes of a fictional character, Flory. In this book he sets certain premises which he uses again in later novels like “1984”.
One of these premises would be the main character. Flory, like Smith from “1984” is a middle-aged man with a physical imperfection. Smith has an ulcer on one ankle and Flory has a large birthmark on one cheek that ruins the aesthetics of his facial features. Both protagonists are also weak and cowardly, bottling up deep feelings of resentment they are too afraid to express. They also both rebel against the respective societies they live in and this futile resistance brings about their downfalls.
Another premise that Orwell re-uses in several of his works is the idea that you can’t win. It doesn’t matter that his protagonists are in the right, they can not stand up to the overwhelming opposition which eventually crushes them.
Both protagonists are defeated. Flory is driven to commit suicide because he has been humiliated and rejected for his “bolshie” ideal that the Burmese natives and the European colonizers are on the same social scale; whilst Smith gives in to the thought police and becomes a devoted supporter of Big Brother.
The idea of communism, and what it means to be truly free and equal is present in most of his works, in which he criticizes oppressive governments like that of the U.S.S.R. in his satirical work “Animal Farm”.
However, there are also some subtle differences. “Burmese Days” is set in a realistic society which his contemporary audience would have recognized instead of the fictional and dystopian worlds in which his later works are set. Also, there are less political commentaries in this novel like the ones Smith reads in “The Book”, here the author focuses mainly on telling the story and makes his statements throughout the latter rather than during it.
Therefore, the young George Orwell did start using and experimenting with certain ideas and setups in his first novel, as well as creating certain stereotypical characteristics in his protagonist to be used in later ones. These premises are what make Orwell’s books so necessary to read, not just because they are sublimely written but because you can’t put them down for fear of what will happen next. His works are a genre of their own which no one has ever quite been able to rival.
