Eric Arthur Blair, with the pen name George Orwell, was a young man when he went to serve in the Imperial Police Force which was his firsthand look at colonialism (Larkin). After about five years, he abruptly decided to leave Burma and become a writer, and his first novel was actually set in the north of Burma. People from Burma think to believe that Orwell’s best works, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, are about the country itself (Larkin). While they may be about Burma, they were not just about the country, but how colonialism was affecting their society. Colonialism, as Orwell observed, was very harmful to the colonists and caused it’s people to become oppressed and hateful (Sobel). Because he was in authority he felt that he, even …show more content…
In his political novel, 1984, he writes about a strong forceful government that may try to take over in the future. “In Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell's description of a horrifying and soulless dystopia paints a chillingly accurate picture of Burma today, a country ruled by one of the world's most brutal and tenacious dictatorships.” (Larkin) Similarly, in his novel Animal Farm, he writes of pigs who overtake a farm. “The same story is told in Orwell's Animal Farm, an allegorical tale about a socialist revolution gone wrong in which a group of pigs overthrow the human farmers and run the farm into ruin.” (Larkin) He had written this after Burma became independent from Britain, a dictator sealed off the country from the world, and launched “The Burmese Way to Socialism” which led to it being one of the poorest countries (Larkin). The people in Burma seem to joke about the fact that Orwell had somehow written a trilogy about what happened to Burma in Burmese Days, 1984, and Animal Farm (Larkin). Orwell similarly writes in most of his works warnings to the people, and about how he feels colonialism, or overpowering governments, have effected him and the world collectively. For example: Burma is known to have one of the worst human rights abuse records in the world. The oppression of this entire nation of Burma was somehow hidden from the world. “A vast network of Military Intelligence spies and their informers ensures that no one can do or say anything that might threaten the regime. The Burmese media — books, magazines, movies and music — are controlled by a strict censorship board and government propaganda is churned out not only through newspapers and television, but also in schools and universities. These methods of reality-control are kept firmly in place by the invisible, though ever present, threat of torture and imprisonment.” (Larkin) Through his knowledge