The Writing of George Orwell
...n, not even inquisitive. It was the shy, wide-eyed Negro look, which actually is a look of profound respect…He has been taught that the white race are his masters, and he still believes it.” The race division in which whites are supposed the natural masters of dark-skinned individuals was at this time a complete illusion. Orwell knew this, even though the African soldiers did not. He goes on to ask “How much longer can we go on kidding these people? How long before they turn their guns in the other direction?” Orwell proved not only to be skeptical of the illusions of white men, but the illusions that may have existed in those he would have seemed to champion. Most notably Gandhi, for whom Orwell had a slight yet surprising distaste. Orwell questions “..to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity – by the consciousness of himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power – and to what extent did he compromise his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are inseparable from coercion and fraud?” The answer, at least in Orwell’s mind, was that Gandhi was, in fact, motivated significantly by his own importance, so to speak. He argues this point by calling upon Gandhi’s young adulthood, in which he “wore a top hat, took dancing lessons, studied French and Latin, went up the Eiffel Tower, and even tried to learn the violin.” He even adopted his extremist opinions “rather unwillingly”. Orwell believed that Gandhi had tried “assimilating into European civilization as thoroughly as possible.” So, as Orwell poses these god-natured accusations, he is revealing yet another form of illusion, one that exists on a more personal level. The biggest instance of illusion in Orwell’s writing can be found in Shooting an Elephant. In this essay, Orwell relates his experience as a police officer in Burma. When an escaped elephant begins ravaging the town, he is forced to deal with it. He is soon facing the elephant with a rifle in his hand. “…it was at this moment,” Orwell states, “that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.” In truth, the elephant represents the failing British presence in India. In this sense, the power of white men in India was an illusion in and of itself. Orwell also states that as he stood there, he was nothing more than “…an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.” What better purpose does a puppet serve than a metaphor of illusion? He feared the consequences of not shooting the elephant. “The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.” In the end, Orwell shoots the elephant, not out of necessity, but out of fear. “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.” In this instance even Orwell himself had created an illusion – its no surprise that he is so consumed with it. Every instance in which truth is fabricated an illusion is created, and that illusion is used control others, in some way, shape, or form. Exposing that fabrication of truth allows Orwell some sense of freedom, in the fact that he is thinking “subversively” and sharing that subversive thinking with others through is writing. Through this, it can be assumed that Orwell was also very interested in the idea of control. Many of the scenarios Orwell writes about display his extreme sense of duty – and also his disdain for it, in hindsight. With duty, a degree of control is forfeited to some other entity. As a British citizen in its colonies, Orwell was often faced with the responsibility to uphold the laws and beliefs of his country, despite his own feelings. This is evident throughout his work. His essay A Hanging displays the grim nature of Orwell’s work abroad. He describes the whole ordeal so distastefully (referring to the gallows as a “brick erection” – a poignant stab at the nature of man) that one procures from it that Orwell has absolutely no desire to be a part of it. This assumption is reaffirmed when he describes how following the hanging “…an enormous relief had come upon us,” and that one had “…the impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger.” Yet still, he actively engaged in the execution because it was his duty. Another instance of duty is evident in Bookshop Memories. In this essay, Orwell writes about his time spent working in a bookshop. He had great respect for his boss, and carried out his job effectively regardless of the issues and people he dealt with. “There was a time when I really did love books,” Orwell states, “…But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening.” During his time in the bookshop, Orwell had lost his love of books – a sacrifice for his duty. It was his duty to carry out his job effectively, as it was his duty to deal with the raging elephant, regardless of the cost. “The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles.” In both illusion and duty control is given up to some other force. Orwell must be concerned with giving control back to those who have somehow lost it, or have had it stolen from them. The way in which Orwell proposes that people take back control is rather strange. He argues that in order to gain control, one must learn acceptance. There are many cases in Orwell’s writing where acceptance takes center stage. In Marrakech he writes of the way in which the dead are treated. “They are merely wrapped in a piece of rag and carried on a rough wooden bier on the shoulders of four friends. When the fri...