George Orwell
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| George Orwell Biography |
Born as Eric Blair in India in 1903, George Orwell received a scholarship from famous boarding schools in England. Because of his background - he famously described his family as "upper middle class" - he was not adaptable and felt pressured and resentful of the dictatorial control of the schools he attended over the lives of his students. After graduating from Eton, Orwell decided to leave the university to work in Burma as the British Imperial Police. He hated his duties in Burma, where he had to enforce the strict laws of a political system he hated. His poor health, which plagued him all his life, caused him to return to England for vacation. After returning to England, he left the imperial police and devoted himself to a writing career.
Inspired by The People of the Abyss in 1903, detailing Jack London's experiences in the slums of London, Orwell bought tattered clothes at a second-hand shop and lived among the poorest people in London. After his resurrection, he published a book about the "Down and Fall" experience in Paris and London. He later lived among bankrupt miners in northern England, and this experience led him to abandon capitalism in favor of democratic socialism. In 1936 he traveled to Spain to witness the Spanish Civil War, where he witnessed firsthand the nightmarish brutality of fascist political regimes.
Unlike many British socialists of the 1930s and 1940s, Orwell was not enthusiastic about the Soviet Union and its policies, nor did he see the Soviet Union as a positive representation of the potential of a socialist society. He could not ignore the brutality and hypocrisy of the Soviet Communist Party, which overthrew the Tsar's semi-feudal regime and replaced it with the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Orwell became a fierce critic of both capitalism and communism, and is primarily remembered as a defender of freedom and a staunch opponent of communist oppression. His largest novel against totalitarianism - Animal Farm and 1984 - forms the basis of his fame. Considered by many to be his masterpiece, Orwell died in 1950, just a year after graduating in 1984.
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