George Orwell – Facing Unpleasant Facts – Review

This collection of Orwell's essays are his best, including the War-time Diary, Looking Back on the Civil War and his famous, Why I Write. Many of these essays I had read years ago, but coming back to them, only re-established the fact, that Orwell is truly the 20^th century master of the narrative essay.

I was reminded of Orwell's plainspoken style, minimalist, sparse prose, yet able to illustrate complex subjects, and combine political narrative with the immediacy and descriptive flair of a fictional piece, placing the reader in the narrative itself. To risk cliché, reading an Orwell essay is educational, informative and entertaining, all at once.

Shooting an Elephant, (1937) tells the experience of the young Eric Blair (Orwell) stationed in Burma as a British colonial policeman. In that area of the world, the elephant is the 'beast of burden', though at the same time, is a revered animal. In this piece we can perceive Orwell's growing disgust as a white, colonial representative, whose duty it is to maintain order and rule over, the indigenous people. Although he tried to relate to the Burmese as human beings, he knew they despised him and his presence there.

On this day, he receives reports that an elephant has gone rogue, insane, and is attacking the people and destroying property. When an elephant moves into this state of mind, the only solution is to take them down. Orwell describes his hesitancy, because when he finally catches up to the animal, it appears settled and somewhat docile. But a large crowd has gathered, all expecting him to kill the beast. He feels the pressure from the people to shoot, but at the same time, the elephant appears normal. Finally he relents to the crowds wishes, due to pride, maintaining his authority as a British policeman, in their eyes, and shoots...Orwell takes a few pages describing the slow death of this noble animal. It was heart wrenching. This could have been the deciding moment when Orwell realised his job as a colonial policeman was against his nature, and finally resigned.

After this experience Orwell returned back to England, where his fight for the working class began. It was at this time, that he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London. (1933) Later he became a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War. In the essay, Looking Back at the Spanish War, (1942?) we see Orwell's style come to life, combining first person experience with political discourse. We see Orwell's Socialist sensibilities described while fighting the fascists in Spain. This essay should be a example for all war correspondents, now and in the future, because the reader feels as though he/she is actually in the fighting, while gaining a greater understanding, politically, of what the conflict was all about.

In How the Poor Die, (1946) Orwell, terribly sick from tuberculosis, enters a hospital for the poor and forgotten. It took me a while to read through the entire text because of the conditions, the sick, and how the poor are treated as opposed to, let's say, a middle class hospital. But this was Orwell's point – we are all human beings, and deserve health care, no matter our economic status in society.

Overall, this entire collection of essays, provides the reader with many insights into war, politics, sociology, English cooking, pubs, used bookstores, tea-making, and writing.

If you have never read George Orwell, this collection would be a good starting point, because above his fiction, 1984, Animal Farm, all genius, we have his essays, that any reader will tell you, are just as relevant today as they were 70 years ago.