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George Orwell famous works. George Orwell, short biography

George Orwell famous works. George Orwell, short biography

George Orwell is the pseudonym of the famous English publicist and writer Eric Blair. Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 have taken the world by storm and are on must-read lists. The author was the first to use the term cold war, which subsequently received wide publicity.

Short biography of George Orwell

The future famous writer was born in 1903 in India in the family of an employee of the Opium Department of the British colony. He was educated at St. Cyprian, in 1917 he was awarded a nominal scholarship and until 1921 he studied at the college. Upon completion of his studies, he served in the Burmese police until 1927, after which he lived in Europe and Great Britain for a long time. Lived free income, gradually wrote journalism and fiction. The firm intention to start writing was established before moving to Paris. In the city, the writer led a peculiar way of life, which V. Nedoshivin described as "a revolt similar to Tolstoy's." Since 1935, he began to publish his works under the name of George Orwell.

A year later he got married, and six months later he went to the Aragonese front in Spain. He fought in the war until he was wounded by a fascist sniper. During the Second World War, he became famous as the host of an anti-fascist program on the BBC. For a long time he fought tuberculosis, he died in 1950.

The work of George Orwell

Orwell argued that true prose should be as transparent as glass, and he himself used this rule when writing books. Examples of what he considered the main advantage of prose can be found in essays and. He believed that linguistic slovenliness and injustice in politics were interconnected. The author called it his duty to uphold the ideals of free socialism and oppose the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945, a book was published - a direct satire of the Russian revolution and the collapse of the hopes born of it, with the help of a parable, the writer shows how animals become the owners of one farm. Another famous book is a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society in all its colors.

We advise you to familiarize yourself with the work of the writer in more detail on your own. Topics that interested Orwell in his time remain relevant to this day. We offer you to read Orwell's books online for free on our website.

“All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others."

From Orwell's story it becomes, as they say, both funny and sad at the same time, and that is probably why this work is to some extent even brilliant. How is it possible to fit so many topics in such a small number of pages, often complex or completely inaccessible to discussion in a daily environment, but therefore not becoming less important?
It turns out you can.

Deep inside, I still resent why works like this story are not listed in the school curriculum, but instead teachers hammer into children's heads for weeks, for example, the need for compassion for someone who is not capable of anything more than to shove its whining in the face of everyone you meet (“Toska”, Chekhov) and endless stories about love, often causing boredom and rejection in children, and also becoming a kind of stigma for the whole variety of literature in general as such for life.
Intellectually, of course, I understand the reasons, or at least I have the courage to assume, but, God, give me the choice to read what they offered me at school and because of which I once even had a period when I wanted to spit from reading ( thanks to “Russian Women” and “Who Lives Well in Russia” by Nekrasov, who forced me to read, almost shoving a book in my face on summer holidays), or read ten times in a row and analyze the Animal Farm in detail, I would choose the second one and would not regret my choice for a minute.

Of course, sometimes you can find worthy works in our program (out of what I had to read, and I read everything that I was told to read at school, I counted at most about ten works from the entire infinite set). But some of the works are not only not worth attention or are very outdated, they are simply useless or completely incomprehensible to the reader, and especially the age to which they are offered.
But this, of course, is my personal opinion, which has little to do with the topic of this review.

Orwell's Animal Farm is an animal-based satire of famous events that took place between 1917 and (approximately) 1950 in the Soviet Union. However, despite the fact that recognizing and comparing the images of the characters in the story with political figures of those times seemed to me quite entertaining entertainment, I will not go into discussions about the history of the USSR, because the plot of the work will ideally suit the situation of almost any country during a particular revolution , as well as after it. An example is Idi Amin's military coup in Uganda in 1971, which established one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes Africa has ever seen.

So the plot of this work is familiar even to those who have not read it: if not from history, then at least from films or computer games in the dystopian genre. In general, at least once, probably, every modern person passed something similar through himself.

First, the once bright land falls into decay, and its population naturally begins to resent such darkness. A strong leader appears who is able to add fuel to the fire and tell about "jelly coasts", "rainbow meadows", "pink clouds" and the like. All this cheers up the crowd, and at the apogee of the crisis, a revolution (often armed) of the masses begins. The population is fighting against pre-existing injustice, getting used to imaginary freedom, in which almost all benefits become temporarily available to them in unheard-of volumes, and they themselves do not notice how they fall for their own hook, raising the same corrupt and cunning dictator to the pedestal of honor. , dressed in a mask of the most complacency.
And in fact, nothing really changes. But here the propaganda apparatus works with a bang (and for some reason right now I needed to remember about the totalitarian regime of the third dynasty with the cheerful name of Ur in Mesopotamia, which I once read about).
I don’t even know how appropriate the line “we wanted the best, but it turned out as always” is appropriate here, but, on the other hand, the attempts also do not go unnoticed ... but it’s too early to rejoice.

Images of characters in the head arise purely associative. Indeed, in fact, few people do not know that pigs are really overly gluttonous and not stupid, and cats are lazy and independent; or have not heard the expressions "plow like a horse", "stubborn donkey" and "dog devotion".
Some animals from livestock control the “state” apparatus, some burn out at work (rather in their slavery), some stupidly follow the voice of politicians, not paying attention to the amendments that contradict the original plan, made only to please themselves politicians. Some cattle don’t care at all - they want to show off their bows and ribbons and not think about anything, while one animal gets the right to kill another, having come up with the simplest reason, and the hero who was repeatedly awarded various titles becomes the state enemy number one.
The characters, their characters are easily distinguishable, one has only to find out the belonging to a particular species and their name, which from the very first pages makes it easier to understand the story and frees the text from digressions that burden it. Napoleon, Squealer, Major... well, you get the idea.

I won't say that I'm a fan of dystopias. In any case, I don't read them so often that I might be allowed to call myself that way. And often, representatives of this genre, behind rare differences, are like two drops of water similar to one work to another and do not at all make the reader want to return to them after a while.
However, I would probably prefer to return to Animal Farm more than once in the future. Great work and really great satire.

(8. A book recommended by a Ridlyan.)

George Orwell

PART ONE

It was a bright cold April day, the clock struck thirteen. Winston Smith, pressing his chin to his chest and shivering from the disgusting wind, quickly slid through the glass doors of Victory House, but still a whirlwind of sand and dust managed to burst in with him.

The entrance smelled of boiled cabbage and old rugs. Pinned to the wall opposite the entrance was a colored poster, probably too big for the place. It showed only a huge, more than a meter wide, face of a man of about forty-five with coarse but attractive features and a thick black mustache. Winston headed straight for the stairs. It was not worth wasting time calling the elevator - even in better times it rarely worked, and now the electricity, in accordance with the savings program, was generally turned off during the daytime, since preparations for Hate Week had already begun. Winston had to overcome seven flights of stairs. He walked slowly and rested several times: he was already thirty-nine years old, and besides, he had a varicose ulcer on his right leg. And from the walls of each platform, directly opposite the elevator door, a huge face looked at him.

It was one of those images where the eyes are specially drawn so that their gaze follows you all the time. "BIG BROTHER SEE YOU" was written on the poster at the bottom. When he entered his apartment, a velvety voice read out a summary of figures that had something to do with iron smelting. The voice came from an oblong metal plate built into the right wall of the room, resembling a dim mirror. Winston turned the knob, and the voice became quieter, but the words were still audible. This device (it was called the "monitor") could be muffled, but it could not be turned off at all. Winston walked over to the window, a small, puny figure whose thinness was further emphasized by the blue overalls of a member of the Party; he had very blond hair and a naturally ruddy face, hardened by bad soap, dull razor blades, and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

The world outside, even through the closed window, seemed cold. Down in the street, the wind whirled dust and scraps of paper, and although the sun shone brightly in the blue sky, everything looked colorless except for posters pasted everywhere. The face with the black mustache was everywhere. One was on the front of the house opposite. BIG BROTHER SEE YOU, the caption said, and dark eyes peered deep into Winston. Below, another poster fluttered in the wind, with a corner torn off, now opening and then closing a single word: "ANGSOC." A helicopter hovered over the rooftops in the distance. From time to time he dived and hovered for a moment, like a huge blue fly, and then soared up again along the curve. It was the police patrol peering through the windows. However, patrols did not play a role. Only the Thought Police played a role.

Behind Winston, the voice from the monitor was still mumbling about cast iron and overfulfilling the Ninth Three Year Plan. The monitor was both a receiver and a transmitter, picking up any sound other than a very low whisper. Moreover, while Winston remained in the field of view of the monitor, he could not only be heard, but also seen. Of course, you can never know for sure whether you are being watched or not. One can only guess how often and in what order the Thought Police connect to this or that apartment. It is possible that they are watching everyone and always. In any case, they could connect to your line at any time. And I had to live, knowing that someone hears every sound and someone follows every movement, unless complete darkness interferes with this. And people lived like this - by force of habit, which has already become an instinct.

Winston was still standing with his back to the monitor. It was safer that way, although he knew full well that his back could incriminate too. About a kilometer above the dreary cluster of houses was the huge white building of the Ministry of Truth, where he worked. And this, he thought with vague distaste, was London, the capital city of the First Air Force Zone, the third most populous province in Oceania. He tried to remember his childhood, to remember if this city had been like this before. Have these nineteenth-century blocks of crumbling houses always stretched out? Were their walls always supported by wooden beams, windows clogged with cardboard, roofs covered with rusty iron, and strange fences of front gardens falling in different directions? Have there always been these bombed-out wastelands with piles of broken bricks, overgrown with willow-tea, plaster dust in the air? And that miserable mushroom mold of wooden shacks where the bombs had cleared large spaces? Alas, he could not remember anything, nothing remained in his memory, except for random bright, but obscure and unrelated pictures.

Ministry of Truth, in Newspeak (Newspeak was the official language of Oceania. See the Appendix for more details on its structure and etymology) - Minitruth, was very different from the surrounding houses. Its huge pyramidal structure of gleaming concrete shot up into the sky, terrace after terrace, for about three hundred meters. From Winston's window one could read the three slogans of the Party beautifully written on the white façade:

WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS POWER.

They said that in the Ministry of Truth there were three thousand rooms above ground and the same number - in the dungeon. In different parts of London, there were three other buildings of approximately the same shape and size. They suppressed everything, and from the roof of the Victory House one could immediately see all four. The buildings belonged to four ministries, into which the entire government apparatus was divided. The Ministry of Truth was in charge of all information, entertainment, education and the arts. The Ministry of Peace dealt with the war. The Ministry of Love maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty was in charge of the economy. They were called in Newspeak: Mini-Truth, Mini-World, Mini-Love, and Mini-Much.

The Ministry of Love looked truly intimidating. This building had no windows. Winston never entered it, he never even got within half a kilometer of it. This building was entered only on official business, and even then through a labyrinth of barbed wire, steel doors and camouflaged machine-gun nests. The streets leading to it were patrolled by black-uniformed gorilla-like guards armed with folding clubs.

Winston turned sharply, not forgetting to give his face an expression of complete optimism - as it was prudent to do always, being in the field of view of the monitor - crossed the room and entered the small kitchen. He sacrificed his lunch in the dining room, although he knew that there was nothing at home except a piece of black bread, which is better to save for breakfast. Winston pulled a bottle of colorless liquid from a shelf with a plain white label: VICTORY GIN. The gin had a disgusting fusel smell, like Chinese rice vodka. He poured almost a full cup, prepared himself, and tipped the contents into himself, like swallowing medicine.

Eric Arthur Blair was born in the city of Motihari, India, whose territory at that time was a British colony. His father held one of the rank-and-file positions in the Opium Department of the colony administration, and his mother was the only daughter of a tea merchant from Burma. While still a child, Eric, along with his mother and older sister, went to England, where the boy was educated - first in primary school Eastbourne, and then at the prestigious Eton College, where he studied on a special scholarship. After graduating from college in 1921, the young man devoted himself for five years (1922-1927) to the Burmese police, but dissatisfaction with imperial rule led to his resignation. This period in the life of Eric Blair, who very soon took the pseudonym George Orwell, was marked by one of his most famous novels, Days in Burma, which was published in 1936 already under a pseudonym.

After Burma, young and free, he went to Europe, where he lived on a piece of bread from one casual job to another, and upon returning home, he firmly decided to become a writer for himself. At this time, Orwell wrote an equally impressive novel, Pounds of Dash in Paris and London, which tells about his life in two of the largest cities in Europe. This creation consisted of two parts, each of which described the brightest moments of his life in each of the capitals.

Beginning of a writing career

In 1936, Orwell, already a married man at that time, went with his wife to Spain, where the civil war was in full swing. After spending about a year in the war zone, he returned to the UK involuntarily - a wound by a fascist sniper right in the throat required treatment and further removal from hostilities. While in Spain, Orwell fought in the ranks of the militia formed by the anti-Stalinist communist party POUM, a Marxist organization that had existed in Spain since the early 1930s. A whole book is devoted to this period in the life of the writer - “In honor of Catalonia” (1937), in which he talks in detail about his days at the front.

However, the British publishers did not appreciate the book, subjecting it to severe censorship - Orwell had to "cut out" any statements that spoke of terror and complete lawlessness that was happening in the republican country. The editor-in-chief was adamant - under the conditions of fascist aggression, it was impossible to cast even the slightest shadow on socialism, and even more so on the abode of this phenomenon - the USSR - in no case. The book nevertheless saw the world in 1938, but was perceived rather coldly - the number of copies sold during the year did not exceed 50 pieces. This war made Orwell an avid opponent of communism, deciding to join the ranks of the English socialists.

civil position

Orwell's writings, written from early 1936, by his own admission in Why I Write (1946), had anti-totalitarian overtones and extolled democratic socialism. In the eyes of the writer, the Soviet Union was one big disappointment, and the revolution that took place in the Land of Soviets, in his opinion, not only did not bring a classless society to power as promised earlier by the Bolsheviks, but vice versa - even more ruthless and unprincipled people were “at the helm” than before. Orwell, not hiding his hatred, spoke about the USSR, and considered Stalin to be the real embodiment of evil.

When in 1941 it became known about the German attack on the USSR, Orwell could not have imagined that very soon Churchill and Stalin would become allies. At this time, the writer kept a military diary, the entries in which tell of his indignation, and after being surprised to himself: “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I had to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!”, But I did live!”, he wrote after a while.

Orwell sincerely hoped that as a result of the war, socialists would come to power in Great Britain, moreover, ideological socialists, and not formal ones, as often happened. However, this did not happen. The events unfolding in the writer's homeland and in the world as a whole oppressed Orwell, and the constant growth of the influence of the Soviet Union drove him into a protracted depression. The death of his wife, who was his ideological inspirer and closest person, finally “knocked down” the writer. However, life went on and he had to put up with it.

The main works of the author

George Orwell was one of the few authors of that time who not only did not sing odes to the Soviet Union, but also tried to describe in all colors the horror of the Soviet system. Orwell's main "opponent" in this conditional competition of ideologies was Hewlett Johnson, who received the nickname "Red Abbot" in his native England - he praised Stalin in every work, expressing admiration for the country that obeyed him in every possible way. Orwell managed to win, albeit a formal one, in this unequal battle, but, unfortunately, already posthumously.

The book Animal Farm, written by the writer between November 1943 and February 1944, was an obvious satire on the Soviet Union, which at that time was still an ally of Great Britain. Not a single publisher undertook to print this work. Everything changed with the start of the Cold War - Orwell's satire was finally appreciated. The book, which most saw as a satire on the Soviet Union, was for the most part a satire on the West itself. Orwell did not have to see the huge success and millions of sales of his book - the recognition was already posthumous.

cold war changed the lives of many, especially those who supported politics and the system Soviet Union- now they either completely disappeared from the radar, or changed their position to a sharply opposite one. The novel 1984, previously written but not published by Orwell, came in very handy, which was later called the “canonical anti-communist work”, the “Cold War manifesto” and many other epithets, which, undoubtedly, were recognition of Orwell’s writing talent.

Animal Farm and 1984 are dystopias written by one of the greatest publicists and writers in history. Narrating mainly about the horrors and consequences of totalitarianism, they, fortunately, were not prophetic, but it is simply impossible to deny the fact that at the present time they are acquiring a completely new sound.

Personal life

In 1936, George Orwell married Elin O'Shaughnessy, with whom they went through many trials, including the Spanish war. The couple did not acquire their own children over the long years of their life together, and only in 1944 they adopted a one-month-old boy, who was given the name Richard. However, very soon the joy was replaced by great grief - on March 29, 1945, during the operation, Elin died. Orwell endured the loss of his wife painfully, for a certain time he even became a hermit, settling on an almost deserted island, on the coast of Scotland. It was during this difficult time that the writer completed the novel "1984".

A year before his death, in 1949, Orwell married a second time to a girl named Sonya Bronel, who was 15 years his junior. Sonya at that time worked as an assistant editor in the Horizon magazine. However, the marriage lasted only three months - on January 21, 1950, the writer died in the ward of one of the London hospitals from tuberculosis. Shortly before that, his creation "1984" saw the world.

Orwell is in fact the author of the term "Cold War", which is often used in the political sphere to this day.
Despite the clearly expressed anti-totalitarian position expressed by the writer in every work, for some time he was suspected of having links with the communists.
The Soviet slogan heard by Orwell at one time from the lips of the communists “Give five years in four years!” was used in the novel "1984" in the form of the famous formula "twice two equals five". The phrase once again ridiculed the Soviet regime.
In the post-war period, George Orwell hosted a program on the BBC, which covered a wide variety of topics - from political to social.

George Orwell- the pseudonym of Erik Blair (Erik Blair) - was born on June 25, 1903, in Matihari (Bengal). His father, a British colonial clerk, held a minor post in the Indian Customs Board. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, in 1917 he received a nominal scholarship and until 1921 attended Eton College. In 1922-1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma. In 1927, returning home on vacation, he decided to resign and take up writing.

Orwell's early - and not only non-fiction - books are largely autobiographical. After being a ship-washer in Paris and a hop picker in Kent, wandering through the English villages, Orwell receives material for his first book, A Dog's Life in Paris and London ( Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933). "Days in Burma" ( Burmese days, 1934) largely reflected the eastern period of his life. Like the author, the hero of the book “Let the aspidistra bloom” ( Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936) works as an assistant book dealer, and the heroine of the novel The Priest's Daughter ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) teaches in rundown private schools. In 1936, the Left Book Club sent Orwell to the north of England to study the life of the unemployed in working-class neighborhoods. The immediate result of this trip was the angry nonfiction book The Road to Wigan Pierce ( The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), where Orwell, to the displeasure of his employers, criticized English socialism. In addition, on this trip he acquired a strong interest in the works of mass culture, which was reflected in his classic essay "The Art of Donald McGill" ( The Art of Donald McGill) and Boys' Weeklies ( Boys' Weeklies).

The civil war that broke out in Spain caused a second crisis in Orwell's life. Always acting in accordance with his convictions, Orwell went to Spain as a journalist, but immediately after his arrival in Barcelona he joined partisan detachment Marxist Workers' Party POUM, fought on the Aragonese and Teruel fronts, was seriously wounded. In May 1937 he took part in the battle for Barcelona on the side of the POUM and the anarchists against the communists. Pursued by the communist government's secret police, Orwell fled Spain. In his story about the trenches civil war- "Memory of Catalonia" ( Homage to Catalonia, 1939) - he reveals the intentions of the Stalinists to seize power in Spain. Spanish impressions did not let Orwell go throughout his life. In the last pre-war novel "For a breath of fresh air" ( Coming Up for Air, 1940) he denounces the erosion of values and norms in the modern world.

Orwell believed that true prose should be "transparent as glass" and wrote extremely clearly himself. Examples of what he considered to be the chief virtues of prose can be seen in his essay "The Killing of an Elephant" ( Shooting an Elephant; Russian translated 1989) and especially in the essay “Politics and English language» ( Politics and the English Language), where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic slovenliness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his writing duty in defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945 he wrote Animal Farm, which made him famous ( animal farm) - a satire on the Russian revolution and the collapse of the hopes it engendered, in the form of a parable, tells how animals began to take care of one farm. His last book was the novel "1984" ( Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949), a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger. Orwell died in London on January 21, 1950.