Orwell’s Gripe

Before getting to meanings and functions of the essay, we should first observe the severity exhibited by Orwell. If a reader can’t grasp Orwell’s ideas themselves, he or she will still ascertain that Orwell is serious. He refers to the fight against the “abuse of language” as a struggle. A genuine concern for language and even society is evident. We’ve encountered such concerns already; studying the likes of Alexander Pope and Matthew Arnold. These authors also spoke out against ongoing trends in society that they found disagreeable much the way Orw

Matthew Arnold wrote in a similar fashion about his feelings regarding societal trends in the “Sweetness and Light” portion of “Culture and Anarchy”. In it he scrutinizes the middle and working class’ lack of taste. He felt that all the freedom the commoner had had led him to be a part of a mass culture whose taste was lesser than that of the elite and the educated (perhaps one and the same). Orwell also chastises the trends of his society. His complaint is that people now embrace and practice a language that sells the involved parties (speaker, writer, listener, reader) short. Like Arnold, Orwell felt these flaws were repairable. Arnold felt that the spread of education, an education which employed a fixed cannon, dedicated to literature that was established and recognized as great art, would lead to acceptably cultured masses. Orwell’s proposed remedy is simpler. He feels it is a matter of everyone making an effort to break sloppy habits. To follow the six rules he suggests would be to avoid what may be at the root everything he complains about.

ell does. The parallels do not end there.

It is important to note that while Orwell takes shots at everyday language, political speeches, news publications, essays and pamphlets, but does not voice any grievances with fiction writing. This is interesting because authors of fiction could fall victim to the habit of ready-made phrases as easily as those of the other institutes of language. This may be because as a fiction writer himself, he sees it as a different process altogether. When he begins to introduce his means for overcoming the brute that is modern language, he uses a recommendation fit for a creative writing class. “…let the meaning choose the word and not the other way about”. Had Orwell bucked fiction in this essay he’d have put himself at risk. To question or criticize the creative process of someone other than yourself is insulting to the person at the receiving

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