CLASSE TERZA

 

GEORGE ORWELL

LIFE

Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pseudonym George Orwell, was born on the 25th of June, 1903 in Motihari, Bihar, India.

His school life was unsuccessful because he suffered from his parents’ expectations and felt an outcast as he was among boys from wealthier families.

In 1928 he became a professional writer and adopted the pen name of George Orwell.  He chose George in honour of St. George, patron of Ireland, and Orwell because of the river Orwell in Suffolk, one of his favourite place.

In 1936 he went to Spain to fight with the republicans in the Spanish Civil War. During the Second World War he worked for the B.B.C. Eastern Service.

From 1945 on he was a correspondent for The Observer newspaper, and regularly collaborated with the Manchester Evening News. It was at this time that he wrote one of his best known books, Animal Farm.

George Orwell died on the 21st of January 1950 in London, at the age of 46, from tuberculosis, which he probably contracted when he was young.

 

ANIMAL FARM

The story is set on “Manor Farm”, owned by Mr. Jones. One night a pig, Old Major, tells the other animals about a dream in which all the animals are free from human oppression.

Three days later Old Major dies and three pigs, Snowball, Napoleon and Squealer, group his ideas called “Animalism” and teach them to the other animals. This causes a rebellion, and Mr. Jones is forced off the farm.

The animals rename the place “Animal Farm” and formulate the “Seven Commandments” which they write on the wall of the barn which they use for their meetings.

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy

2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

3. No animal shall wear clothes.

4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.

5. No animal shall drink alcohol.

6. No animal shall kill any other animal.

7. All animals are equal.

But Napoleon and Snowball soon begin a personal struggle for power; this gradually leads to the establishment of a society based on exploitation.

Years pass and the pigs walk on two legs and wear clothes. The Seven Commandments become slowly distorted and reduced to just one:

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Finally the pigs form an alliance with the man. They sit at the same table with Mr. Jones, and the complete failure of the protest is revealed.

 

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Nineteen eighty-four is a novel about the society of the future. The title derives from the year in which Orwell finished it (1948), the last two number have been turned inside out.

Orwell imagines Britain forty years in the future as a totalitarian dictatorship based on terror. The ruler is known to the enslaved population as ‘Big Brother’, whose photographs dominates public spaces, with the warning that ‘Big Brother is watching you’. At home, every citizen is spied on by a TV camera, children are encouraged to denounce their parents and the Thought Police may punish voluntary or involuntary infringement of the laws.

The hero, Winston Smith, is an intellectual and a member of the party, whose job is to carry out the manipulation of the facts, by rewriting old books and newspapers.

The book’s interest do not lie in the characters or in the action, but in the methods by which thought is controlled, privacy invaded, personal resistance broken down. In the Britain of the future, for example, language will gradually be refashioned until it is impossible to commit the crime of subversive thought: the number of words used will be deliberately cut down, to limit the danger of independent thought, until only concepts that the rulers consider socially acceptable survive.

 

COMMENTARY

Orwell is the British example of the politically committed intellectual, the kind of writer who consider his own art as a possible instrument in the liberation of mankind. He was an artist concerned with problems of construction and of language, who fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.

The language a writer uses should be spare and simple, but first of all clear and direct, so as to become an actual instrument of information and communication. His works should therefore be read as examples of form and style rather than polemical treatises.  The name of Orwell has unfortunately become a synonym for gloomy prophecies, being associated only to his best known novels: Animal Farm and 1984.

Animal Farm is a political fable in the form of an allegory: it described the revolt of the animals on a farm. The pigs, being smarter and more selfish than the other animals, gradually win control and betray the revolution by restoring what is a society based on exploitation.  The work began to be shaped in his mind soon after he came back from Spain, where his beliefs had been shattered.

Eric Arthur Blair changed his name in George Orwell. He began to write because his school life was unsuccessful, so he decided to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. But he soon realized that the British Empire was based on a false concept of equality, which he described in his most famous works.

We like Animal Farm because it speaks about animals’ lives as they were human. We can mirror in Orwell’s ideas: the struggle against totalitarianism and methods to control thought.

The famous ruler ‘Big Brother’ is now well known because of a TV programme in which TV cameras spy on people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JONATHAN SWIFT

 

Life

 

Swift was born in Dublin of English parents, in 1667. He was educated first at Kilkenny Grammar School, and then at Trinity College. During his university studies, his rebellious nature caused him a lot of trouble.

In 1689 he left Dublin and went to England where at Moor Park, in Surrey, he was admitted to the household of Sir William Temple, a Whig statesman and patron of letters. In 1694 was ordained as an Anglican clergyman.

In 1696 he returned to Sir Williams Temple’s where he stayed until his patron died, in 1699. While at Moor Park, he first met Esther Johnson, then an eight-year-old child, whom he would later immortalize as “Stella” in one of his works. After Temple’s death Swift went back to Ireland, where he was given the vicarage of Laracon and, in 1700, a prebend in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in Dublin. He was involved in the struggle between the Whigs and the Tories.

Unfortunately, in 1714, on the death of Queen Anne, his Tory friends fell into disgrace and his hopes for advancement were once more frustrated, the only advantage he had got being the Deanery of St. Patrick’s Dublin, to which he had been appointed in 1713. Meanwhile, in 1708, another woman, Esther Vanhomrigh, the future “Vanessa”  of another of his works, entered his life. She loved him passionately until 1723.  In 1728 Esther Johnson also died and Swift never really recovered from her death.

About 1738 a disease in his left ear grew worse, and he began complaining of increasingly frequent attacks of dizziness. His melancholy deepened together with a growing sense of isolation. In 1742  a stroke paralysed him, after which his mind began to fail until, in 1745, he died utterly insane.

 

Works

 

Swift‘s literary production was indeed plentiful. Among his most important works are:

The battle of the books on the controversy between modem and ancient writers, on the controversy between modern and ancient writers. In perfect neoclassical style, he defended the ancient and mock his modern rivals.
A tale a tub on the corruptions  in religion and leaning, the story of three brothers: Peter (for the Catholic), Martin (for the Lutherans) and Jack (for the English Dissenters) who altered the “coat piece” left them by their father.
A proposal for the Universal use of Irish manufacture, invitation to the Irish to boycott the English goods.
The drapier ‘s letters, on the possible ruin caused to the Irish by the circulation of a new copper coins.
A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people for being a burden to their parents or the country and for making them beneficial to the publick, against British injustices in Ireland as well as the Irish people‘s inefficient policy at home.
Directions to servants satire containing false directions or rather directions as to how to be a bad servant, a satire containing false directions, as to be a bad servant.
Gulliver ‘ s travels, his masterpiece.

Many myths have been created about Swift’s hatred for mankind due to personal frustrations and to a pathologically misanthropic character. He was also capable of sound and profound feelings, as were shown by his love for “Stella” and “Vanessa”, by his friendship for Pope, Arbuthnot and Gay, and saved up other money to found an institution after his death, the future St. Patrick’s hospital for Imbeciles. Where did the myth about him come from, then? Almost certainly from his satirical works, on which he undoubtedly lavished the best of his gifts as a writer, but where he after went into nauseating and disgusting details.

 

Gulliver’s Travels

 

Our  Histories of six thousand Moons make no mention of any other regions, than the two great Empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu. Have been engaged in a most obstinate War for six and thirty Moons past. The war began upon the following Occasion.

The primitive way of breaking Eggs before we eat them, was upon the larger End: But his present Majesty’s Grandfather, while he was a Boy, going to eat an Eggs.

So the Emperor his Father published an Edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great Penalties, to break the smaller End of their Eggs. The People so highly resented this Low, that our History tell us there have been six Rebellions raised on that account; where one Emperor lost his Life, and another his Crown.

 

A MODEST PROPOSAL

 

It’s a melancholy object to those who walk trough this great town or travel in the country, when they see the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance.

It is true, a child may be supported by his mother‘s milk for a solar year, and it is exactly at one  year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents, or wanting food for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food.

 

 

 

Commentary

 

The prose of the 18th century often attacked the political controversies between the Whigs and the Tories that were the two mayor parties of the time. Lots of writers wrote satirical works before Swift such as Pope, Channer, Butler, Dryden and others in the 18th century, but Swift ’s prose is considered the most incisive one.

Swift differs from the other great Tory satirists by the trasgressive nature of his satire. Swift‘s typical tactic is to disguise his satire from the reader under a fable or fiction of some kind. Having disarmed the reader by concealing his true purposes, he then unleashes his full destructive power upon him.

One of Swift‘s favourite techniques is to mention the unmentionable, and his writing is thus frequently shocking to the rider: in A Modest Proposal he describe cannibalism in some detail, and in Gulliver‘s Travels especially, he often include details that his readers would have found offensive. This appears to he done deliberately in order to offend the reader, and suggests a contempt for others.

Swift‘s style is a model of clarity and precision. He has a remarkable command  of concrete details, and is able to make all his fables seem vividly to the reader.

 

Si usano il past continuous e il past simple per indicare che, nel passato, un'azione breve ha interrotto un'azione più lunga. Il past simple, infatti, indica un'azione in conso di svolgimento nel passato, mentre il past simple un'azione che l'ha interotta.

Per introdurre l'azione breve si usa when o while seguito dal past simple, mentre l'azione più lunga va indicata con il past continuous.

Esempio: 'We were eating our dinner, when the phone rang'. La frase può anche essere scritta ribaltando le proposizioni, senza che il significato cambi.. Esempio: 'When the phone rang, we were eating our dinner'.

IL PASSIVO

La forma passiva si usa quando non si sa o non importa chi compie  l'azione, o per impartire istruzioni. In inglese, il passivo si forma esattamente come in italiano: il complemento oggetto diventa soggetto, mentre il soggetto diventa complemento di agente (by - in italiano da).

Se all'attivo la frase è: Mary eats an apple - al passivo diventa: An apple is eaten by Mary.

Ossia si usa come ausiliare il verbo essere seguito dal participio passato del verbo principale.

Spesso il complemento di agente manca, o viene sostituito dal complemento di specificazione (non importa chi abbia svolto l'azione).

This car is bult in the U.S.A.

A table is made in wood.