George Orwell George Orwell (1903–1950), whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, was born in India and educated in England. He studied at Eton, but he didn’t get a higher education. Orwell read a lot and was determined to be a writer. In 1922–27 Orwell worked for Burma Police. After he resigned he began a most unusual literary career. In 1928, while living in Paris and working in a restaurant washing dishes, he started writing articles for the French newspaper Le Monde. In 1929 he returned to London, where he lived the life of a poor person, collecting information for his book Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). It was for this book that he first adopted the pseudonym George Orwell. He then published three more novels. The first, Burmese Days (1934), described his experience in the Police force in Burma and demonstrated his anti-Imperialist political views. This was followed by A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). In 1936 Orwell was commissioned to research and write about the situation and conditions of the unemployed in England. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) was the result of his research. His political point of view, left-wing, anti-Capitalist and independent, was by now quite clear. Left-wing politics support social equality, often in opposition to social hierarchy. They stand up for those in society whom they perceive as disadvantaged and believe that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. With the Spanish Civil War, Orwell left England to fight in Spain for the Republican, anti-Fascist forces. He remained there until he was wounded and forced to return to England. Homage to Catalonia (1938) is about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was suffering from tuberculosis. His next novel, coming up for Air (1939) was written during a period of convalescence spent in North Africa. When he returned to England Orwell continued to write and publish an enormous variety of works including essays, literary criticisms and political reflections. His reputation as a political free-thinker and social critic was high. During the Second World War Orwell worked for the BBC and enlisted in the Home Guard, a volunteer armed body of men, usually too old or too ill to join the regular army. However, his illness prevented Orwell from fulfilling this activity. He died in 1950 at the age of 46. Orwell is best known for his dystopian fiction. His books Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949 are both directed against the dangers of totalitarianism. Animal Farm is a terrifying allegory of the events that took place when Communism was established in Russian after the Revolution of 1917. It is a simple tale of what happens when the animals get rid of the Content owner of the farm and take the farm over control. Their revolution begins with the best of intentions, but is undermined by corruption and greed. Nineteen-Eighty Four (1949) describes a future world in which the political system has a total control over people. The novel is set in Oceania which is a world of government surveillance and public manipulation. This super state has a political system named English Socialism, or Ingsoc in the government's invented language Newspeak. The state has changed language so that the only words left are those for objects and ideas that the government wants people to know about. All the power in Oceania is in the hands of privileged elite of the Inner Party, Individualism and independent thinking are persecuted as thought crimes. The slogan of the book is Big Brother Is Watching You. Every action of a person is seen by the state with the help of television that can watch people in their own home. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm share many themes such as the betrayed revolution, the person's subordination to the group, strict class distinctions, the cult of personality, thought police, daily exercise. This picture of the future created by Orwell is influenced by the hardships of the world war and already existing totalitarian regimes, as in Russia and Spain. It is depressing and gloomy. Link Throughout its publication history, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been either banned or legally challenged, as subversive or ideologically corrupting, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), We (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye and Fahrenheit 451 (1951) by Ray Bradbury. Literary scholars consider the Russian dystopian novel We by Zamyatin to have strongly influenced Orwell’s book. It was completed in 1921. The novel was first published in an English translation in 1924 in New York. We is set in the post-apocalyptic future. The One State is an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which helps mass surveillance.