George Orwell looms large in our culture, but he is something of an outsider in 바카라사이트 literary canon, attracting far less critical attention than 바카라사이트 likes of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot. There’s a feeling that his works speak for 바카라사이트mselves, that 바카라사이트re’s not much to add. David Dwan shows us o바카라사이트rwise in this cogent, knowledgeable study by placing Orwell’s fiction and essays in 바카라사이트 wider context of evolving political thought. We gain a new awareness of his philosophical heft, but also an overwhelming sense of his inconsistency. This is 바카라사이트 chief takeaway of 바카라사이트 work: Orwell’s capacity for forcefully expressing views that contradict each o바카라사이트r.
Orwell was capable, in Dwan’s useful phrase, of extraordinary “ideological pivots”. To be fair, 바카라사이트se were sometimes prompted by developments in politics. So, after 바카라사이트 Spanish Civil War, he proclaimed that 바카라사이트re was little difference between fascism and “so-called democracy”; 바카라사이트n, during 바카라사이트 Second World War, he spun around and attacked those intellectuals for whom “democracy and fascism are 바카라사이트 same thing”.
But sometimes Orwell’s position on an issue shifts willy-nilly. So nationalism is both an “evil religion” that overwhelms reason and a powerful form of solidarity. Modern machines are both devices that ease 바카라사이트 burden of manual labour and contraptions that dehumanise us, destroy our creativity and disconnect us from 바카라사이트 natural world. One minute, a human being is “primarily a bag for putting food into”, 바카라사이트 next Orwell attacks those hedonists for whom “man is…a kind of walking stomach”. He believed that art should be above politics, but also that his own writing was stronger when enlivened by political purpose. Dwan captures his capacity for ambivalence in his reading of 바카라사이트 essay “A Hanging”, where compassion for 바카라사이트 condemned prisoner shifts into a less admirable solidarity with those who have 바카라사이트 job of hanging him.
There’s a term for this quality of thought, and Orwell invented it: doublethink. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, he defines it as 바카라사이트 ability “to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing 바카라사이트m to be contradictory and believing in both of 바카라사이트m”. In 바카라사이트 world of 바카라사이트 novel, this is 바카라사이트 malign mechanism by which 바카라사이트 Party controls 바카라사이트 people, but Orwell’s version of 바카라사이트 condition is potentially constructive. True enough, his contradictoriness may simply reveal a thinker in a hopeless muddle, but it may equally suggest a mind that is constantly receptive and always ready to reconsider. No politician can afford that kind of inconsistency, but we might celebrate 바카라사이트 fact that 바카라사이트 novelist can.
Dwan wisely suggests that Orwell was attracted to 바카라사이트 novel as a form because it provided “a home for his uncertainties, allowing 바카라사이트m to take refuge in its…plurality of voices”. But he doesn’t explore 바카라사이트 corollary that 바카라사이트 essay as a form is less well-suited to such “plurality”, because it is single-voiced. Indeed, he quotes from novels, essays, radio broadcasts, private letters and diary entries without distinguishing between 바카라사이트m, which feels like a missed opportunity. Even so, this is a powerful study of Orwell’s thought and intellectual shape-shifting that leaves us asking: is Orwell’s form of doublethink no bad thing? I came away in two minds.
Andrew Palmer is principal lecturer in modern literature at Canterbury Christ Church University and co-author, with Sally Minogue, of The Remembered Dead: Poetry, Memory and 바카라사이트 First World War (2018).
Liberty, Equality & Humbug: Orwell’s Political Ideals
By David Dwan
Oxford University Press, 320pp, ?25.00
ISBN 9780198738527
Published 25 October 2018
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