CONTENTS:


George Orwell’s biography and work. . . . . 3

George Orwell and Animal Farm. . . . . . . 6

A short extract from Animal Farm. . . . . 11

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15



















George Orwell

George Orwell was born as Eric Blair in 1903 in the Indian village Motihari. At that time India was a part of the British Empire, and Blair’s father Richard, held a post as an agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. The Blairs led a relatively privileged and fairly pleasant life, in helping to administer the Empire, although they were not very wealthy. They owned no property, had no extensive investments; they were like many middle-class English families of the time, totally dependent on the British Empire for their livelihood and prospects.

In 1907 when Eric was about eight years old, the family returned to England and lived at Henley, though the father continued to work in India until he retired in 1912. With some difficulty, Blair’s parents sent their son to a private preparatory school in Sussex at the age of eight. At the age of thirteen he won a scholarship to Wellington, and soon after another one to Eton, the famous public school, but instead of going to university he followed the family tradition by joining the Indian Police Service and was sent to Burma. His five years there led him to reject every aspect of imperialism and the brutality it could create in those in authority, and to feel closer to those who were oppressed than to those who oppressed them. His ideas of writing and his political ideas were closely linked. It was not simply that he wished to break away from British Imperialism in India: he wished to escape from every form of man’s dominion over man, as he said in Road to Wigan Pier (1937), and the social structure out of which he came dependent. In the book named Burmese Days (1934) he speaks about his years spent in Burma.

A similar sympathy and identification with those at the bottom of a social system led him, on his return to Europe, to travel around England and France, living on the road among the poorest groups of society and entering as completely as he could into their ways of life.