George Orwell and Animal Farm :: essays papers

George Orwell and Animal Farm The British author George Orwell, pen name for Eric Blair, achieved prominence in the late 1940's as the author of two brilliant satires. He wrote documentaries, essays, and criticism during the 1930's and later established himself as one of the most important and influential voices of the century. Eric Arthur Blair (later George Orwell) was born in 1903 in the Indian Village Motihari, which lies near to the border of Nepal. 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. Blair's paternal grandfather, too, had been part of the British Raj, and had served in the Indian Army. Eric's mother, Ida Mabel Blair, the daughter of a French tradesman, was about eighteen years younger than her husband Richard Blair was. Eric had an elder sister called Marjorie. The Blairs led a relatively privileged and fairly pleasant existence, in helping to administer the Empire. Although the Blair family was not very wealthy, Orwell later described them ironically as "lower-upper-middle class (Gross, p.109)." They owned no property and had no extensive investments; they were like many middle-class English families of the time, totally dependent on the British Empire for their livelihoo! d and prospects. Even though the father continued to work in India until he retired in 1912, in 1907, the family returned to England and lived at Henley. 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 to Eaton, the famous public school (Gross, p.112). His parents had forced him to work at a dreary preparatory school, and now after winning the scholarship, he was not any more interested in further mental exertion unrelated to his private ambition. ^At the beginning of Why/Write, he explains that from the age of five or six he knew he would be, ^must be,^ a writer (Gross, p.115).^ But to become a writer one had to read literature. But English literature was not a major subject at Eaton, where most boys came from backgrounds either irremediably unliterary or so literary that to teach them English Literature would be absurd. One of Eric's tutors later declared that his famous pupil had done absolutely no work for five years. This was, of course, untrue: Eric has apprenticed himself to the masters of English prose who most appealed to him, including Swift, Sterne and Jack London (Gross, p. George Orwell and Animal Farm :: essays papers George Orwell and Animal Farm The British author George Orwell, pen name for Eric Blair, achieved prominence in the late 1940's as the author of two brilliant satires. He wrote documentaries, essays, and criticism during the 1930's and later established himself as one of the most important and influential voices of the century. Eric Arthur Blair (later George Orwell) was born in 1903 in the Indian Village Motihari, which lies near to the border of Nepal. 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. Blair's paternal grandfather, too, had been part of the British Raj, and had served in the Indian Army. Eric's mother, Ida Mabel Blair, the daughter of a French tradesman, was about eighteen years younger than her husband Richard Blair was. Eric had an elder sister called Marjorie. The Blairs led a relatively privileged and fairly pleasant existence, in helping to administer the Empire. Although the Blair family was not very wealthy, Orwell later described them ironically as "lower-upper-middle class (Gross, p.109)." They owned no property and had no extensive investments; they were like many middle-class English families of the time, totally dependent on the British Empire for their livelihoo! d and prospects. Even though the father continued to work in India until he retired in 1912, in 1907, the family returned to England and lived at Henley. 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 to Eaton, the famous public school (Gross, p.112). His parents had forced him to work at a dreary preparatory school, and now after winning the scholarship, he was not any more interested in further mental exertion unrelated to his private ambition. ^At the beginning of Why/Write, he explains that from the age of five or six he knew he would be, ^must be,^ a writer (Gross, p.115).^ But to become a writer one had to read literature. But English literature was not a major subject at Eaton, where most boys came from backgrounds either irremediably unliterary or so literary that to teach them English Literature would be absurd. One of Eric's tutors later declared that his famous pupil had done absolutely no work for five years. This was, of course, untrue: Eric has apprenticed himself to the masters of English prose who most appealed to him, including Swift, Sterne and Jack London (Gross, p.