From a recent Daily Beast article on Orwell. Click to read.
Clarity Is the Remedy
In searching the Internet for recent articles on George Orwell, I found an NPR story that was published more than a decade ago:
Most people these days think of George Orwell as a writer for high-school students, since his reputation rests mostly on two late novels — Animal Farm and 1984 — that are seldom read outside the classroom. But through most of his career, Orwell was known for his journalism and his rigorous, unsparing essays, which documented a time that seems in some ways so much like our own.
I used to teach Animal Farm, and you know, of course, that I’ve encouraged you to read 1984, among other novels1. But I agree with Paul Graham and Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace and many other smart people: The surest way to ruin a student’s experience with an author is to make the student take tests and write essays about the experience. Instead, you need to recognize that there might be a reason for Orwell’s surge in popularity over the last few weeks.
Read the rest of this NPR essay from 2006, and then tackle Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” which is embedded below and will be photocopied as soon as possible. We’re going to go slowly, but we are going to talk about politics. Everything is about politics, after all, especially lying. As Orwell said,”Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
Orwell on Writing: ‘Clarity Is the Remedy’
Most people these days think of George Orwell as the author of high school reading staples Animal Farm and 1984. But author Lawrence Wright says that Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language,” is the piece of writing to which he most often returns.
Politics and the English Language
Reading an essay like this in a climate like ours requires some interaction. I’ll focus your efforts later in the week; for now, take notes in a way that feels natural to you.
Sidebar: If you are in AP11, plan your week around two assignments: Orwell’s essay and the timed essay you wrote a while back. All juniors should expect general feedback on grade abatement early this week. GAP scores will be posted by Wednesday afternoon.
If you want to read Orwell online, use this link:
Politics and the English Language
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse.
Remember to enable the reader function on Safari if you’re using an iOS device, which will make the text easier to skim:
It’s a little more complicated to do this on Android, but here’s one set of directions for the Chrome browser. If there’s an easier way, leave it in the comments below. The goal is to make it possible to read this sort of essay (and this sort of post) interstitially.
If you want to print your own copy, use the document embedded below. I’ll make copies for you, however, as soon as I’m back in the building tomorrow morning.
[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F01%2FPoliticsandtheEnglishLanguage1946.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]
I was a little too ambitious in floating so many novels at once, but that’s the point of a makerspace: Be ambitious, make mistakes, and learn something from our failures. Don’t be surprised if we randomly spend a period discussing how to catch an invisible man, though. ↩