DOCSLIB.ORG

Dominant, Dormant and Emergent Tendencies in the Twentieth Century Working-Class Novel

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Dominant, Dormant and Emergent Tendencies in the Twentieth Century Working-Class Novel Dominant, Dormant and Emergent Tendencies in the Twentieth Century Working-Class Novel by Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies University of Alberta © Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay, 2015 ii Abstract My doctoral dissertation entitled Dominant, Dormant, and Emergent Tendencies in the Twentieth Century Working-Class Novel studies twentieth century working-class novels as a transnational and trans-historic category. I analyze and explore the Marxian revolutionary subject from a subaltern point of view and show that the global political economy constantly reshapes and reconstitutes the working-class. My research traces how the genre has evolved throughout the twentieth century; the dissertation demonstrates how questions of gender, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability, ecojustice and post-colonialism are associated with class politics and its representation in the genre of the twentieth century working-class novel. In order to outline the dominant, dormant and emergent trends within the genre of the working-class novel, I have divided the study into three clusters. First, I study representative Anglophone proletarian novels from the decade of the 1930s to identify the established tenets of the genre. The second cluster focuses on South Asian novels of the 1930s that integrated class politics with colonial crisis. I demonstrate that while the US novels of the Great Depression, the Soviet Socialist novels and the industrial novels of Great Britain are studied as dominant texts of proletarian culture, texts with peripheral status within World Literature, produced by subcontinental writers like Mulk Raj Anand, Premchand and Manik Bandopadhyay extend the boundaries of revolutionary literature by introducing the subaltern’s crisis. The third cluster consists of texts by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Mohammed Choukri and Mahasweta Devi. I study these novels as emerging texts of revolutionary resistance and show how class struggle remains a continual theme in the latter half of twentieth century World Literature. iii The dissertation deploys a comparative methodology for studying working-class novels from Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Revisiting the perception of the ‘literary’, this research demonstrates that the working-class novel is essentially an international entity. Integrating Marxist theories on literature and representation, with questions of body/disability, Post-colonial criticism and Ecocriticism, I advocate for interdisciplinary and comparative approaches towards the study of working-class novels as an indispensable part of twentieth century World Literature. This research proposes that working-class literature cannot be comprehended thoroughly if we restrict its limits within national literary studies and specific historical periods. Instead, I urge for an alternative methodology that addresses the subject as a transnational category that is constantly evolving. Literary representations of class-conscious political struggles indicate that twentieth century class identity and ideology is embedded within discourses of modernity and modern identity. iv Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One .............................................................................................................................................. 17 The Working-class Novel as a Category in World Literature ................................................................... 17 What is working-class literature? .......................................................................................................... 17 Working-class literature as an international continuous practice in world literature ............................. 20 Journalism and the Working-class Novel .............................................................................................. 28 How does the genre of the working-class novel resist reification and evoke class consciousness? ....... 39 Conclusion: Why did the working-class novel emerge as a genre of international class struggles? ...... 46 Chapter Two ............................................................................................................................................. 52 Dominant Trends in the Genre of the Proletarian Novel: Transnational Narratives of “Western-White- Heterosexual Able-bodied” Working-class Members ............................................................................... 52 Proletarian Novels in the English Context and Love on the Dole as a Typical Proletarian Novel ......... 55 Waste Heritage and its Atypical Tenets ................................................................................................ 76 The Grapes of Wrath: A Popular Proletarian novel of the 1930s .......................................................... 85 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 103 Chapter Three ......................................................................................................................................... 105 South Asian Working-class Novels of the Late Colonial Period: Dormant Tendencies within the Genre ................................................................................................................................................................ 105 Background to the introduction of the working-class novel in the subcontinent ................................. 110 Premchand and Godaan ...................................................................................................................... 118 Mulk Raj Anand’s Coolie ................................................................................................................... 132 Working-class identity in Padma Nadir Majhi ................................................................................... 146 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 159 What does the inclusion of 1930s subcontinental novels add to the study of Working-class Literature? ............................................................................................................................................................ 159 Chapter Four ........................................................................................................................................... 162 Emergent Trends in the Genre of Working-class Novel.......................................................................... 162 Section A. Writing about and for working-class in the ‘third world’ in the postcolonial era .............. 164 Adivasi working-class communities in Mahasweta Devi’s novels .................................................. 164 Petals of Blood as an example of African Working-class Novel ..................................................... 185 v Section B............................................................................................................................................. 206 Working-class narratives by working-class members in late twentieth century .................................. 206 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 214 Concluding Remarks............................................................................................................................... 217 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................ 224 1 Introduction No, the bourgeois intellectuals tell us, there can be no such thing as proletarian literature. We answer briefly: There is. Then they say, it is mediocre; where is your Shakespeare? And we answer: Wait ten years more. He is on his way. We gave you a Lenin; we will give you a proletarian Shakespeare, too; if that is so important. To us the culture of the world’s millions is more important; the soil must be prepared; we know our tree is sound; we are sure of the fruit; we promise you a hundred Shakespeares. — Mike Gold, 1930 This dissertation aims to establish the historicity of the genre of the working-class novel by presenting a comparative study of texts from the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, colonial and post-independence India, ‘post-colonial’ Kenya and Morocco. Novels from ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ origins will be juxtaposed to show that the working- class novel is a transnational and trans-historic literary genre. While the dominant trends of the genre are set by 1930s ‘western’ literary works, texts from ‘non-western’ geo-linguistic provenances provide dormant and emergent tenets to the genre. The genre’s international spirit can be traced back to the Vsemirnaia literatura (World Literature) Publishing House, which was established in 1918 under the leadership of Maxim Gorky. This publishing house attempted to synthesize Goethe’s idea of world literature and the Marxian idea of universal literature to form a notion of (Soviet) Proletarian World Literature. This short-lived project aimed to produce Russian translations of the masterpieces of world literature
Load more

Recommended publications
  • John Steinbeck As a Radical Novelist Shawn Jasinski University of Vermont
    University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM Graduate College Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 2008 John Steinbeck As a Radical Novelist Shawn Jasinski University of Vermont Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis Recommended Citation Jasinski, Shawn, "John Steinbeck As a Radical Novelist" (2008). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 117. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/117 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate College Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected]. JOHN STEINBECK AS A RADICAL NOVELIST A Thesis Presented by Shawn Mark Jasinski to The Faculty of the Graduate College of The University of Vermont In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Specializing in English May, 2008 Accepted by the Faculty of the Graduate College, The University of Vermont, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts specializing in English. Thesis Examination Committee: Advisor - John ~yhnari,lP$. D +A d)d Chairperson Patrick Neal, Ph. D. /'----I Vice President for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies Date: April 4", 2008 ABSTRACT The radical literary tradition of the 1930‟s inspired many American authors to become more concerned with the struggle of the proletariat. John Steinbeck is one of these authors. Steinbeck‟s novels throughout the 1930‟s and 1940‟s display a lack of agreement with the common Communist principles being portrayed by other radical novelists, but also a definite alignment with several more basic Marxist principles.
    [Show full text]
  • Thackeray's Satire on British Society of the Early Victorian Era Through
    PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI i MATERIALISM AND SOCIAL STATUS: THACKERAY’S SATIRE ON BRITISH SOCIETY OF THE EARLY VICTORIAN ERA THROUGH REBECCA SHARP CHARACTER IN VANITY FAIR AThesis Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree in English Language Education By Nadia Octaviani Student Number: 021214111 ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008 i i PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI vi We are what we imagine Our very existence consist in our imagination of ourselves Our best destiny is to imagine who and what we are The greatest tragedy to befall us is to go unimagined N. Scott Nomaday This thesis is dedicated to my family, to my friends, and to my self. vi vi PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank those who have given me their affection, support, guidance and criticism in finishing every part of my thesis. First of all, I would like to bestow my gratitude to Allah s.w.t. for guiding and keeping me not to stray from His path and finally finish my thesis. My deepest gratitude is given to my beloved dad and mom, Pak Kun and Mama Ning, who have given me their never-ending affection and prayer to support me through the life. I also thank them for keeping asking patiently on the progress of my thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • Upton Sinclair Against Capitalism
    Scientific Journal in Humanities, 1(1):41-46,2012 ISSN:2298-0245 Walking Through The Jungle: Upton Sinclair Against Capitalism George SHADURI* Abstract At the beginning of the 20th century, the American novel started exploring social themes and raising social problems. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, which appeared in 1906, was a true sensation for American reading community. On the one hand, it described the outra- geous practices of meatpacking industry prevalent at those times on the example of slaughterhouses in Chicago suburbs; on the other hand, it exposed the hapless life of American worker: the book showed what kind of suffering the worker experienced from his thankless work and poor living conditions. Sinclair hoped that the novel, which was avidly read both in America and abroad, would help improve the plight of American worker. However, to his disappointment, the government and society focused their attention exclusively on unhealthy meatpacking practices, which brought about necessary, but still superficial reforms, ignoring the main topic: the life of the common worker. Sinclair was labeled “a muckraker”, whereas he in reality aspired for the higher ideal of changing the existing social order, the thought expressed both in his novels and articles. The writer did not take into account that his ideas of non-violent, but drastic change of social order were alien for American society, for which capitalism was the most natural and acceptable form of functioning. The present article refers to the opinions of both American and non-American scholars to explain the reasons for the failure of Sinclair’s expectations, and, based on their views, concludes why such a failure took place.
    [Show full text]
  • Troubled Masculinity at Midlife: a Study of Dickens's Hard Times
    235 Troubled Masculinity at Midlife: A Study of Dickens’s Hard Times HATADA Mio Hard Timesで提示される “Fact”と“Fancy”の2つの対照的な世界、あるいは価値観は、一見 すると相反するもののように思われるが、この小説は両者の対立よりもむしろ、両者がいかに 密接な関係を持っているかを暗示しているように思われる。そして、主要な登場人物は複雑に 絡まり合ったこれら2つの世界に、それぞれのやり方で関わりを持ち、反応を示す。興味深い ことに、2つの絡み合う世界は、主要な人物（その多くは中年の男性である）の抱えている問 題とも密接な関係を持っている。本稿ではHard Timesにおける2つの世界を、作品中で直接姿 を現すことのないSissy の父親の存在を手がかりに、中年期の男性が経験するmasculinityの危 機、という観点から再考している。 キーワード：aging, masculinity, gender Introduction It is well known that F. R. Leavis included Hard Times in his work The Great Tradition, calling it “a completely serious work of art” (Leavis 258) with the “subtlety of achieved art” (Leavis 279). Much earlier, John Ruskin estimated the novel as “the greatest” of Dickens’s novels, and asserted that it “should be studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in social questions” (34). Many other critics make much of the aspect of Hard Times as a critique of the contemporary society, and it has often been treated with other industrial novels such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855). Humphry House, for instance, points out that Dickens was “thinking much more about social problems,” and that “Hard Times is one of Dickens’s most thought-about books.” He goes on to assert that “in the ’fi fties, his novels begin to show a greater complication of plot than before” because “ he was intending to use them as a vehicle of more concentrated sociological argument” (House 205). David Lodge, too, affi rms, “Hard Times manifests its identity as a polemical work, a critique of mid-Victorian industrial society dominated by materialism, acquisitiveness and ruthlessly competitive capitalist economics,” which are “represented... by the Utilitarians” (Lodge 69‒70).
    [Show full text]
  • Orwell George
    The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume II: My Country Right or Left 1940-1943 by George Orwell Edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF Back Cover: "He was a man, like Lawrence, whose personality shines out in everything he said or wrote." -- Cyril Connolly George Orwell requested in his will that no biography of him should be written. This collection of essays, reviews, articles, and letters which he wrote between the ages of seventeen and forty-six (when he died) is arranged in chronological order. The four volumes provide at once a wonderfully intimate impression of, and a "splendid monument" to, one of the most honest and individual writers of this century -- a man who forged a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud, who possessed an unerring gift for going straight to the point, and who elevated political writing to an art. The second volume principally covers the two years when George Orwell worked as a Talks Assistant (and later Producer) in the Indian section of the B.B.C. At the same time he was writing for Horizon, New Statesman and other periodicals. His war-time diaries are included here. Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia First published in England by Seeker & Warburg 1968 Published in Penguin Books 1970 Reprinted 1971 Copyright © Sonia Brownell Orwell, 1968 Made and printed in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks Set in Linotype Times This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Contents Acknowledgements A Note on the Editing 1940 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Country and City in the Proletarian Realist Novel: Kang Kyŏng-Ae's from Wŏnso Pond and Peter Abrahams's Mine
    Jacob Sloan. “Country and City in the Proletarian Realist Novel: Kang Kyŏng-ae’s From Wŏnso Pond and Peter Abrahams’s Mine Boy.” Mediations 33.1-2(Fall 2019-Spring 2020) 31-68. www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/ country-and-city Country and City in the Proletarian Realist Novel: Kang Kyŏng-ae’s From Wŏnso Pond and Peter Abrahams’s Mine Boy Jacob Sloan Of course, nothing would circulate inwardly either if the outward were completely solid. Outside, however, life is just as little finished as in the ego which is working on this outside. No thing could be altered in accordance with wishes if the world were closed, full of fixed, even perfected facts. Instead of these there are simply processes…The Real is process; the latter is the widely ramified mediation between present, unfinished past, and above all: possible future. —Ernest Bloch1 Without the revelation of important traits and without an interaction of the characters with world events, objects, the forces of nature and social institutions, even the most extraordinary adventures would be empty and meaningless. —Georg Lukács 2 I. Country, City, and the Proletarian Realist Novel In the past few decades, scholars of proletarian literature have labored to extend the definition of the genre beyond its temporal and national boundaries. Moving beyond the traditional description that grounds literary proletarianism in the years surrounding the Great Depression in the United States, Jim Holstun presents us with a more genre-specific and less time- and nation-bound definition. Reminding us that “[b]ecause the capitalist mode of production is global, so too is the proletariat and the proletarian novel,” Holstun defines the proletarian novel as “a fictional narrative that, 32 Jacob Sloan from a particular proletarian perspective, totalizes the capitalist mode of production in movement.” Holstun argues that because the genre totalizes, it shies away from modernist durée or the “one-day narrative” and moves toward longer-scale narratives of capitalist crisis.
    [Show full text]
  • Lights and Shadows in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia
    Paul Preston Lights and shadows in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia Article (Accepted version) (Refereed) Original citation: Preston, Paul (2017) Lights and shadows in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. Bulletin of Spanish Studies. ISSN 1475-3820 DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2018.1388550 © 2017 The Author This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/85333/ Available in LSE Research Online: November 2017 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. Lights and Shadows in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia PAUL PRESTON London School of Economics Despite its misleading title, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is almost certainly the most sold and most read book about the Spanish Civil War. It is a vivid and well-written account of some fragments of the war by an acute witness.
    [Show full text]
  • Orwell on Poland and Political Controversies of His Time
    Orwell on Poland and Political Controversies of his Time Krystyna Wieszczek University of Southampton There could hardly be a more appropriate 20th-century British author to bring up for discussion under the theme of “conformity and controversy” than George Orwell. One of his well-known characteristics as an author and political commentator was that of striving to think independently and to boldly present his own conclusions to the public, irrespectively of how controversial they could be at the time. This paper will examine some of his texts that responded to specific issues concerning Poland during the turbulent period of Europe’s transition from war to post-war, in which his statements were not always compliant with those held by much of the British public or with the British censoring policy. It aims to discover more about how Orwell approached conformity and controversy surrounding some contentious problems of his time and, by doing so, also about their political contexts in both Britain and Poland. The texts taken into consideration include his responses to the Warsaw rising, the abduction and trial of sixteen Polish leaders by the Soviets, and the settlement of Polish refugees in Britain after the war. A Socialist’s Disappointment with the USSR Unappreciated at Home Orwell was one of few British left-wing intellectuals to question the government and left-wing press’s uncritical reception of Stalin’s politics in Britain well before the beginning of the cold war (the name of which he coined). His epiphany came during the Spanish civil war where he witnessed the insidious way in which a Soviet-sponsored communist organisation began eliminating fellow socialists, including members of the POUM1 in which Orwell had served, jeopardizing the whole socialist agenda only to gain more power.
    [Show full text]
  • Nandan Gupta. `Prak-Bibar` Parbe Samaresh Basu. Nimai Bandyopadhyay
    BOOK DESCRIPTION AUTHOR " Contemporary India ". Nandan Gupta. `Prak-Bibar` Parbe Samaresh Basu. Nimai Bandyopadhyay. 100 Great Lives. John Cannong. 100 Most important Indians Today. Sterling Special. 100 Most Important Indians Today. Sterling Special. 1787 The Grand Convention. Clinton Rossiter. 1952 Act of Provident Fund as Amended on 16th November 1995. Government of India. 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. Indian Institute of Human Rights. 19e May ebong Assame Bangaliar Ostiter Sonkot. Bijit kumar Bhattacharjee. 19-er Basha Sohidera. Dilip kanti Laskar. 20 Tales From Shakespeare. Charles & Mary Lamb. 25 ways to Motivate People. Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson. 42-er Bharat Chara Andolane Srihatta-Cacharer abodan. Debashish Roy. 71 Judhe Pakisthan, Bharat O Bangaladesh. Deb Dullal Bangopadhyay. A Book of Education for Beginners. Bhatia and Bhatia. A River Sutra. Gita Mehta. A study of the philosophy of vivekananda. Tapash Shankar Dutta. A advaita concept of falsity-a critical study. Nirod Baron Chakravarty. A B C of Human Rights. Indian Institute of Human Rights. A Basic Grammar Of Moden Hindi. ----- A Book of English Essays. W E Williams. A Book of English Prose and Poetry. Macmillan India Ltd.. A book of English prose and poetry. Dutta & Bhattacharjee. A brief introduction to psychology. Clifford T Morgan. A bureaucrat`s diary. Prakash Krishen. A century of government and politics in North East India. V V Rao and Niru Hazarika. A Companion To Ethics. Peter Singer. A Companion to Indian Fiction in E nglish. Pier Paolo Piciucco. A Comparative Approach to American History. C Vann Woodward. A comparative study of Religion : A sufi and a Sanatani ( Ramakrishana).
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative Viewpoint and the Representation of Power in George Orwell’S Nineteen Eighty-Four
    Narrative viewpoint and the representation of power in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four BRIGID ROONEY This essay considers how ‘perspective’ and ‘choice of language’ in George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, position the reader and contribute to the text’s representation of power, powerplay and people power.1 The aims of this essay can be restated in the form of two key questions. What specific features of the narrative in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four construct the text’s representation of power, and of powerplay? How do those features position the responder to think and feel about political power and about whether there can be people power? Questions of medium, textual form, and genre It is important to distinguish, at the outset, between ‘narrative’, as a general term for story or the telling of story, and ‘the novel’, as a particular medium or form of narrative. Narratives are everywhere in culture. Not only are they integral to novels but they also permeate films, news reports, and even the everyday stories we use to make sense of life. Narratives always position the listener, reader, or responder in particular ways, expressing partial truths, and creating or constructing certain views of reality while minimizing or excluding others. The novel, on the other hand, is a specific textual form that developed, in the medium of print, during the last three hundred years or so in European societies. Not all cultures and societies have given rise to ‘novels’, though all have told stories, in visual, oral, or written forms. The European novel’s popularity peaked in the nineteenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of Politics and Literature In
    Murray Arnold Sperbfr • J -. I 'MARX: G. O.'S DOG': A STUDY OF POLITICS I AND LITERATURE IN GEORGE ORWELL'S I HOMAGE TO CATALONIA I That was about as far as my thoughts [about the Spanish Civil War} went. [ did not make any of the correct political reflections. I never do when things are happening. It seems to be always the case when I get mixed up in war or politics-I am conscious of nothing save physical discomfort and a deep desire for this damned nonsense to be over. Afterwards [ can see the significance of events, but while they are happening I merely want to be out of them-an ignoble trait, perhaps.1 After Orwetl returned from Spain, he struggled to write Homage to Catalonia. As he tells us in that work, the Barcelona police had raided his hotel room and seized his Spanish diary and notes. (From a literary point of view, this was probably fortunate: Homage has an organic quality that Orwell's previous work, The Road to Wigan Pier, lacks; the latter, mainly transcribed from notes, shows its patch.work composition.) Orwell spent the first six months back in England trying to write his Spanish experiences and at the same time study the historical background of the war. Being a part· time journalist and book reviewer, he was able to turn his study to profit and in so doing leave a complete record of his growing understanding of the Spanish Civil War. In An Age Like This we can follow Orwell's attempt to define his political position on the Spanish Civil War after he returned from Spain (Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • The Humanism of George Orwell
    THE HUMANISM OF GEORGE ORWELL APPROVED: ets^L Major Professor 3 (\ A svi JLGtCx, Minor(Professor irector of the DeparttffeprfT'oi History- Dean of the Graduate School />/A*' , Hale, Jeffrey Lee , The Humanism of George Orwell* Master of Arts (History), December, 1971, 107 pp., bibliography, 19 titles. This paper argues that George Orwell was a myth maker in the twentieth century, an age of existential perplexities. Orwell recognized that man is innately "patriotic," that the will-to-believe is part of his nature, but that the excesses of scientific analysis have disrupted the absolutes of belief. Through the Organic Metaphor, Orwell attempted to reconstruct man's faith into an aesthetic, and consequently moral, sensi- bility. Proposing to balance, and not replace, the Mechanistic Metaphor of industrial society, Orwell sought human progress along aesthetic lines, "Socialism" was his political expres- sion of the Organic Metaphor: both advocated universal integ- rity in time and space. The sources are all primary. All of Orwell's novels were used, in addition to three essay collections: Collected Essays; The Orwell Reader; and The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, editors, four volumes„ Orwell's essays and book reviews contain his best social criticisms. There are six chapters. The first chapter is the intro- duction, which includes a biographical sketch of Orwell, defi- nitions of the Organic and Mechanistic Metaphors, and a comment on the bibliography. The second chapter examines the oppression of the common man by monopolistic capitalism in colonial Burma and depression-ridden Europe, and Orwell's socialist advoca- tions.
    [Show full text]