The Works of George Orwell

The Literary Canon is an authoritive list, as of the works of an author. To enter or actually be entered into the canon is to gain certain obvious privileges; it is governed by influential critics, museum directors, and their board of trustee’s as well as scholars and teachers. To appear in the Norton or Oxford anthology is not a sign of greatness but a status of accessibility to a public reading. Belonging to the Literary Canon confers status; social, political, economic, and aesthetic, belonging to the canon is a guarantee of quality.
George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair, to English parents Richard Walmesley (a civil servant) and Ida Mabel (Limouzine) Blair in Motihari, Bengal (now Bihar) India in 1903 and died a year after writing Nineteen Eighty Four in 1950. He graduated from Eton College in 1921. His political beliefs follow those of a democratic socialist. His interests include fishing, carpentry, gardening, and raising animals. He served in the Spanish civil war as well as World War II where he held the rank of sergeant. George held many jobs during his career as a writer he was a police officer in Burma, a dishwasher in Paris, a teacher in England, as well as a shopkeeper, he also produced educational radio programs for the BBC. Among his writing accomplishments he wrote fiction as well as nonfiction novels his two most famous being “Nineteen Eighty Four” and “Animal farm” both of which have been adapted for film.
In “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty Four” warn that the growing power of modern governments; regardless of their philosophy threatens to wipe out such widely held ideals as love of family, tolerance towards others, and the right to make up one’s own mind. Orwell constantly found himself in disagreement with the ideological mass movements of his time, ranging from capitalism to fascism and communism. Orwell, wrote Lawrence Bander “was an individualist” who confronted “Contemporary, social, and political problems as a man who has done all his thinking for himself” mistrusting the board theories of Twentieth-century political thinkers, he remained faithful to the truth of his own experience. “These qualities rare and valuable,” declared Bander “and they are natural sources of his popularity with readers who must learn, like him, to work things out for themselves.
Orwell never wrote Abstract theory in favor of concrete detail, he wrote more of the subject matter he best knew; his own life and thoughts as George Woodcock cautioned, however, “The autobiographical form of (Orwells) can be deceptive, if taken too literally.” At heart, Woodcock suggested, Orwell was a moralist, deeply concerned with the proper conduct of human life. His personal experience raised ethical questions that he shared with his readers”. One of Orwell’s earliest works is the 1931 essay “a hanging” which Crick called “the first piece of writing that shows distinctive style and powers.”
I definitely feel George Orwell fits into all the criteria to be in the literary canon, due mainly to his last two novels have been so popular amongst young as well as older adults; together they gave Orwell an international reputation. When concentrating on these works, it can be ignored that some young readers have also enjoyed some of his earlier books. Apart from arguments about the quality of his writing there has been much debate about Orwell’s last two major books. Are they simply negative, lacking any positive view? Is he a propagandist rather than a novelist? Is his pessimism about the future justified or is he simply uttering a warning? However we answer these questions, it is undeniable that his books have sharpened our awareness of issues of many of his words and ideas have become part of the way we ourselves think today.
Orwell by reason of the quality that permits us to say of him that he was a virtuous man, is a figure in our lives. He was not a genius, and this is one of the remarkable things about him. His not being a genius is an element of the quality that makes him what I am calling a figure. It has been sometime since we in America have had literary figures-men who live their visions as well as write them, who are what they write, whom we think of as standing for something as men because of what they have written in their books.

Works Cited
Bander, Lawrence, George Orwell Longmans, green, 1954
Woodcock, George, The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell, new edition, enlarged, Schocken, 1984.
Crick, Bernard, George Orwell: A life, Secker and Warburg, 1980.