How does the Use of Genre & Writing Style support the Main Ideas in George Orwell’s ‘Why I write’?

131031 Kim Yesuel (Lillian Kim)

10V4

2013.05.03 (Fri)

 

How does the Use of Genre & Writing Style support the Main Ideas

in George Orwell’s ‘Why I write’?

 

George Orwell (1903-1950) is considered to be a very political writer. His essay, ‘Why I write’ deals with why he writes, and how he became to get such reasons. He says that he writes to expose some lies and facts and to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one. To effectively convey this message, he incorporates several genres such as personal narrative, poetry, autobiography in one piece of essay. Also, his writing style supports the main idea in ‘Why I write.’

George Orwell displays his personal narrative story in time order from when he was child to now. Time ordered explanation logically convinces readers why the author grew to emphasize on political purpose of writing. When he was callow, he focused on his own emotion feeling undermined, then started to describe things as they were. Then, his experience as police officer in Burma, and Spanish war (1936-1939) triggered him to be cognizant of how the writing can reveal inconvenient truth and political factors. In short, He was self-oriented, but got interested in things surrounding him from a person to war. He explains the historical situation and honestly reflects his mindset in time order, and the reader can follow the flow of essay easily. If he only described his current point of view, then the readers would get curious of why he became to get such view. By introducing the history of his point of view, the author successfully satisfied the reader. Also, explaining how the historical situation affected his point of view was efficient because it made the change of his mind sound more plausible and cogent. Lastly, the honest writing of how he was like and how he felt also made the reader show more approval to the essay.

The most unique part of ‘Why I write’ may be the poetry in the middle of essay. This doesn’t often happen, so drags the readers’ attention at the first sight. Then, by its condensed structure, the poetry effectively conveys his dilemma concerning political writing. In the poetry, it is said,‘But born, alas, in an evil time, I missed that pleasant haven’, ‘I dreamt I dwelt in marble hall, And woke to find it true; I wasn’t born for an age like this’. These phrases express his resentment and disappointment toward his life in such a chaotic world full of political events. Considering this is a poetry written when he was still dubious of including political purpose in his writing, it can be assumed that he feels so bad about getting influenced by social events. He could have focused on pure writing if he had not been born in that age, but born in ‘marble hall’, an ideal place. Therefore, he is frustrated by the reality. However, soon he finds out that true writing should include political factors, and what he must do is to combine political and artistic writings in one. If he included his flow of thought in normal sentences, then it couldn’t bring this much impression. By doing it in the condensed structure of poetry, it can have much more impact on readers, and make them to think of it deeper.

One of the main ideas of ‘Why I write’ is that George Orwell writes to fuse political and artistic purposes. At the end of the essay, he says ‘I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages.’ Purple passages mean passages without meaning, full of decorative adjectives. This is far from an ideal writing George Orwell currently pursues. He wants a writing to be straightforward, not full of descriptive, decorative terms. That’s why he uses straightforward and clear terms at the second half of ‘Why I write’. However, we can find several purple expressions in the first half of the essay. For example, ‘outraging my true nature’, ‘a short story which was a ghastly failure’ and ‘I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels’ are quite elaborate expressions. In these, ‘outraging’, ‘ghastly’, ‘enormous’ are not the words you often use in daily lives. But, George Orwell positioned all three of these in the first half of the essay, when he still remained to be artistic writer. This is a definite contrast in writing style between the first and the second half of the essay. George Orwell could convey the change in his point of view toward writing effectively by slightly changing his writing style throughout the essay.

 

 

George Orwell used several devices in his essay, ‘Why I write’ and those mentioned above are some. They support one of the main ideas of the essay. By giving personal narrative story in time order, inserting poetry, and changing the writing style slightly, he could much more effectively convey his message to the readers.

 

Word count : 791