Brendan Lanier – Contributor
George Orwell was an English writer born in 1903 to middle-class English parents in Burma. After school, he chose to work for the Imperial Police in Burma. Finding this unsatisfying, he wandered around Paris and London living as a tramp and working in grimy restaurants. This was when he began writing. He wrote about his time in poverty in his memoir Down and Out in Paris and London. In 1936, he was shipped off to Spain where he fought in the Spanish Civil War and nearly died. He recounted his time in Spain in his book Homage to Catalonia. During World War II, he worked as a reporter for the BBC and wrote the book Animal Farm. In 1949, he wrote his final book 1984. Eventually, he contracted tuberculosis and died in 1950.
He is most famous for his two novels Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell often wrote about his staunch opposition to totalitarianism. His book Animal Farm is a satirical fable about farm animals revolting against humans that is meant to depict how power can corrupt those in charge. Another one of his novels, 1984, is a dystopian novel about a man living in a future world ruled by a frightening totalitarian regime. Another thing that Orwell primarily writes about is either being trapped under an oppressive system or stuck in a depressing situation without a way out of it. His book Down and Out in Paris and London details living in poverty in Paris and London. Another of his books, Burmese Days, depicts life under British Imperialism in Burma. One of Orwell’s strengths as a writer is his ability to create stories that relate to real life problems. He tells stories of living poverty and how power and control can lead to governments becoming corrupt and oppressive. Orwell is the author who awakened me to the problems of the world by informing readers about what life is like for those who are impoverished and living under oppressive governments. His writings made me more aware of dictatorships and the atrocities they often inflict on their citizens. Overall, George Orwell is one of my favorite writers not only for his intriguing books, but for showing me what brutal realities such as poverty and oppression are like for people.
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