George Orwell - Facing Unpleasant Facts

I’m not sure about US education, but in England (and France), one is (or was when I was at school) fed with George Orwell from an early age. I think I read Animal Farm about 6 times between the ages of 11 and 22, and it never felt like a chore. And it’s still completely relevant today, making it pretty timeless. But I really fell in love with George Orwell in my late teens, while studying British social history in a French university (I was born in England but grew up in France). I loved the professor, her focus on women in society was wonderful, refreshing, and super interesting. And she also introduced me to Orwell’s essays and his brilliant overviews of society and all it entails during his time. 

In my opinion, Orwell’s brilliance lies in his ability to not only really see and evaluate the world around him, but also to be able to accurately record it in a way that is still interesting for everyone to read. His prose is smart, funny, and honest, and he never shied away from describing his own personal shortcomings and views. For example, in Shooting An Elephant, he readily confronts his own conflicted feelings on how he despises imperialism for all it stands for, but still can’t help despising the natives in Burma, because they hate him and what he stands for. He doesn’t pretend to be anyone other than who he is, and provides the reader with personal, and not always easy to digest, viewpoints. 

This collection is really just Orwellian excellence, and I would recommend it to anyone, even those who have never read any of Orwell’s work before. While he was definitely a writer of his time, and a lot of his work contains descriptions and thoughts of the world of his time, most of these can be adapted to our world today. There are some racist and classist statements within some of the essays that will make you cringe (see Shooting An Elephant for example, as well as some of the comments in his war diaries), but he also never seemed to have any qualms about confronting his own take on some of those statements. 

I had to laugh out loud during Bookshop Memories, not just because it is still so relevant today, but because of the mention of “The Mill on the Floss by T.S. Eliot”. I wonder if it was just a mistake, and reprint mistake, or deliberately added by the author to see if we were paying attention? I guess I will never know! 

One highlight out of many: “Apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist.” (From War-Time Diary). Some things never really change do they? Orwell’s observations in his journal are so interesting and important - and a good reminder for us all to record current events in our personal journals as they could be of use to our future generations when analyzing historical events.

All in all a great collection. Now I need to reread Homage to Catalonia.