The Life and Works of George Orwell: Between Totalitarianism and Social Critique

What is George Orwell's Biography?

George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair; he was born in India in 1903 to Anglo-Indian parents.
When he was about five, Orwell went to England with his mother and sisters, and he studied until 1922. During this year, Orwell came back to India and joined the Indian Imperial Police. He left it in 1928 and he went to Paris, hoping to become a freelance writer. At this time he wrote his first novels and articles, in spite of his humble economic condition.
In the 30s Orwell went to England again where he wrote other works and he got married the 9 June 1936 with Eileen Maud O’Shaughnessy who met for the first time at a party. He was so smitten by her that at the end of that evening Orwell proposed to her. According to new researches it seems that the husband somehow eclipsed his wife’s genius and one of her poetries from which he took the inspiration for 1984.

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War he went to Spain and fought for the Republican side against Francisco Franco’s Fascist uprising. Seriously wounded, he had to return to England, where he wrote a lot of articles, essays and diaries about his experience. During the Second World War Orwell wrote his famous novel Animal Farm, in which he blamed the totalitarianism and specially the Russian Stalinism.
In 1945 he worked as a correspondent for the Observer in France, Germany and Austria. Orwell lived his last years on the Hebrides, with his adopted son. There he completed his most famous work, titled Nineteen Eighty-four, which was publish with Secker & Warburg and he married Sonia Brownell. As a matter of fact his first wife had died in 1945 during a surgical procedure.
He died of tuberculosis the 21 January 1950 at 46 years old.

Main works: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four

George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four are certainly his masterpieces.
They both tell about the totalitarianism and, in particular, they contains a biting criticism of this form of government using, also, satire and irony.
Animal Farm is a sort of fable in which Orwell realized the perfect portrait of the Russian Stalinism, with its contradictions and peculiarities.
Most people, in fact, has not realized yet that totalitarianism were made of terror and the idealization of a strong personality.
In this novel is, as well, analyzed the origin of corruption used by high powers in order to fulfill their individualistic aims and the origin of the disillusionment that some time revolutionary ideals would take place of thirst for power.
Nineteen Eighty-four is a longer and more complex novel, in which Orwell talks about an utopian world completely subjugated by an oppressive and powerful totalitarian party. The main character of the book is Winston Smith, an office-worker who tries to preserve the last ray of humanity controlled by “The big brother”, a mechanism that spy every movement through always on telescreens.
During the narration a dichotomy emerges between Smith’s desire for rebellion expressed in his diary that is a sort of illusion of gained liberty since in his word having a critical mind is one of the most atrocious crimes and the failure of the rebellion itself when it is tried to carry it out because of traitors.