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Dulley, Paul Richard.Pdf A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details ‘In Front of your Nose’: The Existentialism of George Orwell Paul Richard Dulley PhD In Literature and Philosophy University of Sussex April 2015 2 I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted, whole or in part, to another university for the award of any other degree. Signature:……………………............... 1 University of Sussex Paul Richard Dulley PhD in Literature and Philosophy ‘In Front of your Nose’: The Existentialism of George Orwell Summary George Orwell’s reputation as a writer rests largely upon his final two works, selected essays and some of his journalism. As a novelist, he is often considered limited, and it is for this reason that his writing has perhaps received less serious attention than that of many of his contemporaries. Some recent publications have sought to redress this balance, identifying an impressive level of artistry, not only in his more recognised works, but in the neglected novels of the 1930s. Yet, aside from studies focused upon his political beliefs, there has been a lack of attention given to the wider ideas underpinning Orwell’s writing, in particular, those which might be considered, in popular terms, ‘existential’. Given its unusually firm grounding in the many experiences he underwent, Orwell’s thought, I argue, can be viewed profitably from this philosophical standpoint. By engaging his writing in a dialogue with that of the phenomenological-existentialist thinkers, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Emmanuel Levinas, this project aims to make sense of the ideas implicit within his work. Where the work of the aforementioned figures is often opaque and highly abstracted, it will be shown that Orwell’s offers the reader literary and real-life exemplars as a means of making difficult ideas understood. The study is divided into four two-part chapters, which track the Orwell canon in a broadly chronological fashion. In parallel with this, the ideas of the existential philosophers are, too, introduced chronologically: Heidegger, Sartre and, Levinas. The thesis attempts to argue that understanding the implicit existentialism in the work of Orwell not only offers a more complete insight into the man, and the tensions inherent in his character, but also affords the reader many much-needed exemplifications, and in some cases augmentations, of some of the most important ideas in existentialist philosophy. 2 Contents Summary ........................................................................................ 1 Contents ......................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ....................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1: A Phenomenology of Exploration We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Aitches ............................................. 13 (‘Beggars in London’, ‘A Day in the Life of a Tramp’, ‘The Spike’, Down and Out in Paris and London Part One) No One Had Called Me Mate Before ...................................................... 47 (Down and Out in Paris and London Part Two, ‘Clink’) Chapter 2: Authenticity and the Self He Wears A Mask And His Face Grows To Fit It ................................... 72 (Burmese Days, ‘Shooting an Elephant’) To Drift in Rootless Freedom .................................................................. 96 (A Clergyman’s Daughter) Chapter 3: The Face of the Other A Sort of Caricature ............................................................................... 123 (‘Boys’ Weeklies’, ‘Bookshop Memories’, ‘Antisemitism in Britain’, ‘Notes on Nationalism’, The Road to Wigan Pier) 3 One Mind Less, One World Less ........................................................... 149 (The Road to Wigan Pier, ‘A Hanging’, ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’, Homage to Catalonia) Chapter 4: Time, Objects, and Persons The Sancho Panza View of Life ............................................................ 178 (Coming Up For Air, ‘The Art of Donald McGill’, ‘Inside the Whale’) The Basis of Socialism is Humanism .................................................... 206 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) Conclusion .................................................................................. 239 Bibliography .............................................................................. 244 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Alistair Davies, for the tireless support he has offered over the four years I have been working on this thesis. His belief in both the project itself and my own ability to see it through has been a crucial factor in its completion. I shall certainly miss our lengthy discussions concerning Orwell, and the valuable feedback and guidance that he has regularly provided. I thank Peter Davison for his generosity in responding to my unsolicited contact, and for not only giving my project his blessing, but also providing essays and materials to aid with my research. His masterly Collected Works has, without doubt, changed the face of Orwell studies, allowing the student to easily access materials that before required repeated visits to the Orwell Archive. Thanks also to my colleagues in the English Department at Millais School, who demonstrated patience and support as I juggled research with my teaching duties. And a special word of thanks for my many classes of pupils who have embraced Orwell’s work, often offering highly original interpretations that have certainly influenced my own. I would like to thank my uncle, David Whitney, for his unwavering support, both moral and financial, from my time as an undergraduate in the early 1990s through to today. And finally, my grandfather, George Whitney, who was always there for me as I grew up and from whom I learnt what it means to be a man. This thesis is dedicated to my beloved mother, Jacqueline, whose unending support made my education possible. I will always carry her love and humility with me. 5 Introduction In one of his later ‘As I Please’ columns, written in 1947, George Orwell recounts an incident that took place on a liner travelling to Burma some twenty-five years earlier: The deck was empty except for the fair-haired quartermaster, who was scurrying like a rat along the side of the deck-houses, with something partially concealed between his monstrous hands. I had just time to see what it was before he shot past me and vanished into a doorway. It was a pie dish containing a half-eaten baked custard pudding. […] It took me some-time to see the incident in all its bearings: but do I seem to exaggerate when I say that this sudden revelation of the gap between function and reward – the revelation that a highly-skilled craftsman, who might literally hold all our lives in his hands, was glad to steal scraps of food from our table – taught me more than I could have learned from half a dozen Socialist pamphlets?1 The account is of note not because of the socialist lesson that can be drawn from its particulars, but because it exemplifies the way in which Orwell’s mind worked. Bernard Crick, one of Orwell’s most celebrated biographers, notes how ‘it took him another ten years at least’ to see the incident ‘in such a specifically socialist perspective’.2 And this is true of much of his writing: Orwell drew his political and social ideas from his own personal experiences, sometimes extrapolating a fundamental truth many years later from just a single, seemingly trivial incident. As Peter Stansky and William Abrahams observe, ‘for him, personal considerations (the particular experience) were more important than political considerations (the abstract experience) and […] he had to move through the former to arrive at the latter.’3 Orwell’s writing, both fiction and non- fiction, is replete with the experiences that made his life. And so we find in his work accounts of witnessing a hanging, shooting a rogue elephant, working in a bookshop, teaching in a second-rate private school, hop-picking, tramping, being shot by a sniper, 1 George Orwell, ‘As I Please #68’, in The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. by Peter Hobley Davison, 20 vols (London: Secker & Warburg, 1998), XIX , 5-8 (p.6). 2 Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life ((London: Secker & Warburg, 1980), p.79. 3 Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, The Unknown Orwell (London: Constable, 1972), p.141. 6 attending Left Book Club meetings, and visiting junkshops, to name but a handful of examples. George Woodcock describes this tendency as Orwell’s ‘special characteristic as a writer: that he invented very little, preferring to write from experience’.4 But there are even more subtle personal considerations underpinning Orwell’s work. For not only does he frequently draw upon specific experiences, he often attempts to present those experiences in a way that mimics how they were originally perceived. Thus,
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