Subjective Frame - Orwell's Essays
This week we've started to analyse George Orwell’s (Eric Blair!) essays as part of the Module B course, critical study of texts.
To start off, we have to approach his essays from a subjective frame – to develop a personal response to the texts. My response will be focused upon these questions:
What do you feel when you first read the text?
What does the text remind you of?
What is the composer expressing in this text?
So... I’ll just jump right into it :)
For someone who seemed unfamiliar with sports (“someone else informs me” and “I was told by someone who was there”), Orwell had no problem with being upfront in conveying his opinion on the topic. He came off arrogant and quite frankly, he took quite a bigoted approach in his style of writing. I felt that for him to parallel nationalism with sports was a tad excessive. I mean, are sports always “mixed up with politics” or “a cause of group hatreds”? Why can’t we play for leisure? Also, I’m pretty sure not everyone plays sports as an outlet for one’s “sadistic impulses”.
I didn’t enjoy his sarcastic tone either– “No doubt the controversy will continue to echo for years in the footnotes of history books.”
At first, I felt uncomfortable with his thoughts on how he was “amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations” I mean, what about Christmas Truce during WW1? Probably not the best example, however, sport did bring the two sides together for a short period, and perhaps the reason for the prolonged war was their sense of patriotism or their desire to fulfil orders. Nonetheless, Orwell’s approach seemed quite cynical. Although upon consideration, I realised that I had to factor in the time it was written and his personal context. With this is mind, I've become quite indecisive on my opinion of this text.
I found Orwell’s approach on defining a ’good bad book’ quite interesting, in which he defines it as “the kind of book with no literary pretensions, but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished.” My lack of knowledge on the books he has listed has left my quite confused. Also, he was rather critical when examining the books he mentioned, and his comment “if American books can be included” came off as rude to me. However, I did enjoy how he noted that the fact that one can be moved by a book that one’s intellect simply refuses to take seriously – is a reminder that art is not the same as cerebration. I also liked how he ended his essay by acknowledging that he knows of no strict literary test which would indicate which books are more superior, which gave a more humble impression.
I really enjoyed this essay. It explored ideas that I could relate to – such as the feeling of being lonely, isolated and under-valued. When Orwell mentioned Blake’s ‘Tiger, tiger’ it just reminded me of The Mentalist. I liked how he took us through his personal journey in progressing his writing style and reasons for writing. What interested me was Orwell’s mention of carrying out a literary exercise of making up continuous stories about himself, like a diary existing only in his mind. I tend to find myself doing that more than I’d like… except I’m sure Orwell’s level of articulacy was much greater than mine, even when simply narrating a story in his own mind – and in no way would I want to compare myself to him. I could also relate to how he felt he seemed to be making an almost involuntary effort to reflect the same meticulous descriptive style of writing as the writers he had admired. I find it most difficult to write anything without feeling like an illiterate fool, or as if I’m simply throwing a bunch of unorganised thoughts onto a page and making no sense whatsoever.
I was pleased to see that he factored in the composer’s context when assessing their motive, which reminded me of my history extension lessons. However, I wasn't a huge fan of how he attempted to categorise the different motives for writing – that being sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. I’m getting mixed feeling on this approach. It’s admirable to attempt to do such a thing, but I feel that to confine writing, as an art, to such simplistic motives belittles it in a way.
My gosh, this essay took forever to read and analyse. Whilst the progress was quite tedious, the content was actually really interesting. I probably feel this was because it links in with the topics I study in one of my favourite classes, modern history. It was interesting to see how Orwell attempted to explain nationalism to his audience, as it a term that apparently has no definition universally accepted. Orwell used a range of historical examples, of which some were intended to shock. His comparison of nationalism to communism was interesting in the sense that he states that they’re essentially the same – how these ideologies renders the believers to turn a blind eye towards their faults or inaccuracies. I liked the part where Orwell says “every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered” which reminded me of Stalin’s actions in rewriting history books during his period, to the point of removing certain people from images. I found it hilarious how he wrote this essay for a specific audience, the intelligentsia, which he would later spend the whole time criticising, which also further illustrated how opinionated he really is.
In the beginning, Orwell seemed quite exaggerated, harsh, and presumptuous. However, he does explain towards the end that it was inevitable, as he was attempting to isolate and identify tendencies which exist universally and pervert our thinking… which I don’t really understand the meaning of (oops). At the end of the essay, I liked his summary of how hints of nationalistic factors are in all of us, and that it is possible to struggle against them through a moral effort and making allowance for the inevitable bias. My favourite part was when he noted that “you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought” but that the “emotional urges which are inescapable… should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality.” which I think is a great piece of advice everyone should follow.
Unfortunately, I'm too tired to continue writing responses to the other two essays. I'll finish that off tomorrow. Sleep is more important.
