The Author in his Century

The Author in his Century

Some writers don’t hesitate to criticise their own society through their work by expressing their way of thinking under ther form of a ‘parody’ or a simple citicism. But many books also reveal their century, firstly through the language and the lexis, and also by the story itself. To that extent do writers reveal society through their work ?

Iam going to answer this question through the analysis of two books George Orwell wrotes that we studied in class : Animal Farm and 1984. In conclusion I will give you my own vision of the importance in being able to express yourself in society, with my personal document.

   George Orwell’s Books deal withsocial injustice, mostly social resistance to oppression and totalitarianism. We can refer this genre to his retless life, between his job in the Indian Imperial Police when he was only 19, his life as a poor writer in Paris and his experience in the civil war.

  His first most famous book that is Animal Farm, is a dystopia and also a political satire with characters related to modern political figures of his time. The particularity of this novel is the literary genre it belongs to, Georgle Orwell called it ‘’a Fairy Story’’ with an ironical touch, maybe to let this book accessible for everyone, even a young public. The story deal with a farm where animals are trying to establish a democracy after throwing out their owner.

Here, the passage is extracted from chapter 6, the animals are governed by 7 Commandments until 3 pigs start to bring law and infringe some of these Commandments…

• We understand that the pigs are refer to the supervisers and the other animal (Boxer, Clover, Muriel…) are the supervised.
• The supervisers are the only ones who can read and write contrary to the others animals
• The pigs are also taking advantage as living in the farmhouse and sleeping in beds because they did modified initial commandments

When you are literate, you are much more powerful than the others because what is not written or can’t be read is quickly modified

We can found the tools of authoritarianism in this text :

• The pigs are playing on their words and frightening the others with an army (puppies)
• They are modifiying the past to shape the present at will (Commandments)

Animal Far mis not a democracy anymore, it has become a totalitarian state

   Words are major instruments of power : by losing words, you will lose the power to react and express yourself. It is a notion that appear in every dystopias, also in 1984 which take place in a fictional country called Oceania. The books shows us a nation governed by Big Brother and a powerful political organization constantly monitoring people through telescteens.

This extract is from chapter 5 in which we learn about Newspeak, a new way of speaking introduced by the Party that could become dangerous for people

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Newspeak is the term employed in the book opposed to Oldspeak, that is also the new official language of Oceania. The idea of the Party in the use of a new language wasn’t to create new words for a better communication : Newspeak must become less expressive, not just by suppressing ‘unnecessary’ words but also by promoting a narrowing of thought and awareness (Ignorance is Strenght : one of the slogans of the Party). The mind is more easily controlled for the Party because when you reduce the vocabulary, you also reduce people’s ability to put words on the complexity of their feelings and thought.

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