IN A fundamental way, Orwell now got deeply involved in the political and social situation of pressing urgency, and no doubt this direct experience invested his political writings with far- reaching significance.
Orwell is not a great novelist, but the working of a conscious intellectual design and innovative skill are hallmarks of his craft. He had developed impeccable objectivity and insight in portraying events and characters, overtly political — a fact which makes his Animal Farm (1944) and Nineteen Eighty four (1946) historically significant. Though the modern reader does not set much store by the ironic Utopias projected by the author, the depiction of the contemporary political realities — particularly the character of the party and the state — are quite unmatched.
Even more successful are Orwell’s two other books in displaying political consciousness (not ideology) albeit of a rare quality. Here we refer to Homage to Catalonia (1928) and Road to Wigan Pier (1937). In the second book, we find very authentic descriptions of the coal miner’s life in northern England. Indeed, it has so much of social and political realism that many unway readers have turned round to discover Orwell’s more serious-significance behind the surface brilliance. It brings out clearly enough how different Orwell’s approach was, and how it evolved with sustained clarity leaving behind the facade of idealism or the abstract liberal position of some other writers of his time.
What gives a real distinctiveness to the journalistic writings of Orwell is their reasoned and analytical objectivity. Side by side, his penchant for liberal ideas of individual liberty and freedom of expression; the single-minded zeal in their pursuit and his own sense of responsibility towards these deep values of civilization. His wartime writings for the ‘Left’ Tribune or the hurriedly turned out pieces for the BBC may not have acquired lasting literary merit, but they are always remarkable for his unerring insights and a sense of discrimination. Rigidity or orthodoxy of a doctrinaire kind has no place here, yet his basic response to the creative aspects of life and society was felt to be deeply genuine.
On occasions he was like the social scientist trying to remove the pet prejudices on the minds of readers by demonstrable appeals to observed realities. It displayed ‘self-criticism’ of a rare kind; this critical approach is nowhere better demonstrated then in his long essay “The English People”. Indeed, the fine relationship between the contradictions of English social life and the existing class hierarchy is articulated in his writing much before modem critics life Prof. Raymond Williams took up the point.
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