Why I Write by George Orwell - Essay Example

Review of the reading “Why I Write” by George Orwell Why I Write presents a very realistic account of Orwell’s journey to hip. Orwell has encapsulated various memories of early childhood and has discussed his inclination towards writing in such a truthful, simple and straight forward manner that one feels like reflecting upon one’s own childhood to explore one’s old fantasies. Orwell has written the article in a very simple English and the organization of paragraphs is quite sensible and meaningful. Orwell establishes at the outset that he was meant to be a writer, no matter what path he chose to it. In the introductory paragraph, Orwell tells how having remained away from his father for the first eight years of his life and been placed between his two siblings with a distance of five years from each of them put him into isolation. He attributed his early childhood agitation to the very isolation. In the school, Orwell had the strange habit of talking to imaginary characters. His literary ambitions were undermined by his isolation. In fact, Orwell’s creative skills that drive his writings today were what enabled him to move into his imaginary world in his early childhood. Back then, he wrote very less. All that his childhood would-be-serious writing covered was a plagiarized poem that was written at the age of four or five, two patriotic poems published successively in the local newspaper when Orwell was eleven and thirteen years of age respectively and a story that was downright failure. At the time when his writing was limited, he was engaged in the literary activities that included but were not limited to numerous semi-comic poems, rhyming play, and the autobiography. Although Orwell fancied thinking of himself as a Robin Hood undergoing thrill and making anecdotes of it, yet the writing that surfaced at the end of the day was pretty much an ordinary reflective piece of writing of a child. Even when he got 25 years old, his tendency to use the descriptive language weighed more than his knowledge of fancy words that would make his writing more professional. Orwell has identified four great motives that writers conventionally have before they start to write. Although the four motives may be present to different extents in different writers, yet all do possess them necessarily. The four motivators as chronologically explained in the article are sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. The article depicts Orwell’s obsession with politics. Orwell feels that politics is ingrained in every piece of writing. Even the articles that claim to be anti-political are political to the highest level. It’s just that they deny their link with politics. Orwell asserts that political bias not only gives the author an opportunity to spread his/her personal ideology, but also provides him with a means to enchant the piece of writing with more meaningful and expressive thoughts. Orwell has hardly included any evidence to support his views. There is no use of numeric statistics, facts and figures in the article at all. Orwell has fundamentally relied on his psychosocial and cognitive development and the experiences he had had throughout his years of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Orwell attributes the development of his political orientation to his experience in Burma. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism. (Orwell, 1953). Orwell was always moved by wars. Wars inculcated patriotism in him. It was the war that took place between 1914 and 1918 that caused him to write two patriotic poems in his childhood that were nice enough to be published in the local newspaper. In fact, those are the only pieces of writing that Orwell thinks he had written well in his childhood. As he grew up, the Spanish Civil War and the Hitler’s government also played a big role in shaping Orwell’s political orientation. The fundamental weakness of this article is that Orwell seems to find the origin of his literary skills in his isolation that is conventionally interpreted in negative terms. His emphasis on his early childhood loneliness and maintenance of a low profile in the school as the source of his tendency to be a part of the imaginative world in which he polished his literary skills does not lay a nice example for the beginners. Instead of establishing his early childhood loneliness as his source of literary inspiration, Orwell should have referred to the nature as the source of this blessing. Secondly, in some of his sentences, Orwell has interpreted the habit of writing in negative terms. For example, “One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention” (Orwell, 1953). A study of the early childhood record of Orwell suggests that although he did have a flavor for the writing, writing was anyway not his passion or something he was good at. This generates a positive message for the audiences. Many children who are bad at writing can expect themselves to become good writers in the future. Orwell conveys that while he maintained a distance for the proper writing, his involvement in other literary activities kept polishing his literary skills. This piece tends to challenge common sense by considering the descriptive language as a cause of derogation of the style of writing. Orwell says, “Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside” (Orwell, 1953). Description is a necessary element of writing. There is no point incorporating difficult words into the sentences to make the writing look more professional if it lacks the appeal conventionally made by the descriptive language. No writer can give sense to his writing without incorporating some details. This explains why Orwell couldn’t help making his writing descriptive even when he had not intended to do that. I personally believe that it is fundamentally the aesthetic egoism that motivates a writer to share his experience with others. Before starting to write, a writer has to make sure that he has objective knowledge of the subject of discussion. I think that it is not description or fancy words that make an article worth reading. Instead, what attracts the audiences towards a piece of writing is its appeal. We read articles in order to expand our knowledge on a particular subject. There are many articles in which writers make use of difficult vocabulary. We don’t like reading them because quite often, we are not even able to understand them. On the other hand, there are many articles with a lot of description reading which, we feel bored. We want to read something that is both informative as well as time saving. If a writer is able to ensure both, then the extent of descriptive language or use of difficult vocabulary hardly makes any difference. I think that although one’s personal interest in writing is very helpful in making one a good writer, yet one can become a writer by learning the writing skills as well. What is primarily important in the art of writing is creativity and imagination. A creative individual knows what subject to choose, how to organize the arguments, what evidences to show to prove the arguments and how to enhance the overall effect. Learning to write is not a one-day task. It takes years of learning and practice in order to enhance one’s imaginative power to the level required for writing. Orwell is not quite wrong to say that politics reflects in almost every subject of writing because politics is such a vast term that it encapsulates innumerable topics. Almost all topics can somehow be connected with politics. Near the end of the article, Orwell says, “[G]ood prose is like a window pane” (Orwell, 1953). I also believe that a good prose does play the role of a window pane. This is particularly evident from another piece of writing of Orwell i.e. The Hanging in which Orwell writes about capital punishment. During his days in Burma, Orwell had experienced being the British Empire’s civil servant. In The Hanging, Orwell has discussed the mood, environment as well as the concerned parties in such an unbiased manner that the audience is able to decide whether the hanged individual was done justice to or not. Although this piece of writing by Orwell is not an outburst of anger on evil, yet it serves as a window pane that provides an insight into the human psyche of both the assassinators and the condemned. References: Orwell, G 1953, Why I Write, viewed, 1 November 2011, . Read More