What Can We Learn from George Orwell?

Anyone who ever has to write anything in English can learn something from George Orwell.

While Orwell (1903-50) is mostly remembered for his final novels Animal Farm and 1984 and as the inventor of such terms as Big Brother, Room 101 and memory hole, he was more naturally a journalist. He wrote best when communicating directly with the reader about things that he had personally observed or experienced. The techniques he used in his articles, essays and autobiographical writings to achieve direct communication with the reader are accessible to anyone and can be copied. Here are some of them.

1. Write with a purpose

Orwell wrote with urgency and energy and never leaves the reader wondering what he is trying to say. For instance, in his essay Wells, Hitler and the World State he criticises H G Wells’ utopian theories in the following terms:

‘What is the use of saying that we need federal world control of the air? The whole point is how we are to get it. What is the use of pointing out that a World State is desirable? What matters is that not one of the five great military powers would think of submitting to such a thing.’

This essay annoyed Wells greatly, leading to a bitter dispute between the two men. This is not surprising, as Orwell could hardly have exposed the unreality of Wells’ theories more mercilessly. The point was that for him the truth was more important than Wells’ feelings.

Take-home point: Work out what you want to say and then say it as effectively as possible.

2. Have an attention-grabbing opening line

Orwell knew how to grab the reader’s attention from the outset by starting with a controversial, striking or paradoxical statement. Here are some examples:

‘In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.’ (Shooting an Elephant)

‘As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.’ (The Lion and the Unicorn)

‘Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent’ (Reflections on Ghandi)

‘Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.’ (Notes on Dali)

Take-home point: Think about how to get the reader’s attention from the start. Hit the ground running.

3. Use a ‘plain style’

Orwell was famous for his plain style. What does this mean? He said that ‘good prose is like a window pane’ – it allows you to see straight through to the matter at hand, and the writer’s choice of words facilitates this rather than sending you running to the dictionary. Therefore, he rarely uses long words, metaphors or abstract language. He provides concrete examples and makes constant use of his own lived experience to illustrate what he has to say.

For example, in describing the boarding school to which he was sent as a child, in Such, Such were the Joys, he writes as follows:

‘The crowded, underfed, underwashed life that we led was disgusting… For example, there were the pewter bowls out of which we had our porridge. They had overhanging rims, and under the rims there were accumulations of sour porridge, which could be flaked off in long strips.’

Here, he starts with an assertion, but backs this up the detail of the long strips of dry porridge, which concretises and justifies his disgust in the reader’s mind.

Take-home points: Keep it simple. Use striking examples to illustrate your arguments.

4.  Communicate directly with the reader

One of the most characteristic features of Orwell’s writing is that the reader feels that Orwell is talking directly to them. This is a good trick for anyone who wants to communicate effectively in writing. How is this done? Partly it is a consequence of the plain style – of using simple language to break down the divisions between written and spoken English.

However, he uses a couple of other techniques which are worth pointing out. Firstly, he often pauses in his narrative to address the reader directly and explain why he is telling us something. For instance, in Homage to Catalonia, which recounts his experiences of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, he rather drily notes:

‘The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail.’

Secondly, he makes occasional use of the second person pronoun, you. For instance, in The Road to Wigan Pier, which focuses on coal-mining in the north of England in the 1930s, he discusses the physical discomfort involved in going down a mine:

‘For a week afterwards your thighs are so stiff that coming downstairs is quite a difficult feat… Your miner friends notice the stiffness of your walk and chaff you about it (“How’d ta like to work down pit, eh?”)’

Take-home point: Consider the reader at all times. Imagine that you are talking directly to him or her.

5.  Use concrete detail

In The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell describes the breakfast table at his lodgings in Wigan at the home of a couple called Mr and Mrs Brooker as follows:

‘At the bottom there was a layer of old newspaper stained by Worcester Sauce; above that a sheet of sticky white oil-cloth; above that a green serge cloth; above that a coarse linen cloth, never changed and seldom taken off. Generally the crumbs from breakfast were still on the table at supper. I used to get to know individual crumbs by sight and watch their progress up and down the table from day to day.’

This image has the blend of detail and impressionism of a skilfully painted still life, and lingers unpleasantly in the reader’s mind.

Take-home point: Make a picture with words to illustrate a point. 

6.  … But relate it to the wider context

Having established the Brookers’ unpleasant kitchen table firmly in the reader’s mind, Orwell links it to the wider socio-economic context:

‘it is no use saying that people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind. For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world. You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilization that produced them. For this is part at least of what industrialism has done for us.’

Take-home point: Link detail to the wider context.

7.  Make links between previously unlinked issues

In many of his articles and essays, Orwell makes links between topics which one would not normally expect to see linked. For instance, in Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool he discussed a pamphlet written by Tolstoy in which Tolstoy explained his dislike of Shakespeare’s works. Orwell spotted a parallel between the failed renunciation of power and material possessions practised by Tolstoy towards the end of his life and the treatment of the same theme in Shakespeare’s King Lear:

‘But is [King Lear] not also curiously similar to the history of Tolstoy himself? There is a general resemblance which one can hardly avoid seeing, because the most impressive event in Tolstoy’s life, as in Lear’s, was a huge and gratuitous act of renunciation.’

In Inside the Whale, Orwell repeats the same trick by comparing the hedonistic and politically uncommitted stance shown by Henry Miller in his controversial novel of thirties’ Paris, Tropic of Cancer to the plight of the biblical Jonah swallowed by the whale:

‘there is no question that Miller himself is inside the whale. All his best and most characteristic passages are written from the angle of Jonah… He has performed the essential Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining passive, accepting.’

This kind of linkage is striking in itself, but also provides a strong framework on which to hang his general analysis.

Take-home point: Linking previously unlinked material often provides an interesting and thought-provoking approach to your topic.

8. Contextualise

Orwell is a master of contextualisation. He has the knack of sketching out, in a few sentences, the frame of reference within which he is writing. Much of Down and Out in Paris and London is devoted to recounting his adventures as a plongeur (dishwasher) in a Parisian hotel, a job he introduces as follows:

‘nothing could be simpler than the life of a plongeur. He lives in a rhythm between work and sleep, without time to think, hardly conscious of the exterior world; his Paris has shrunk to the hotel, the Métro, a few bistros and his bed.’

The reader then has this picture firmly in mind and this allows him or her to make sense of the narrative that follows.

Take-home point: Define your frame of reference from the outset. This makes it much easier for the reader to follow what you have to say.

9.  Use humour

Orwell is not generally known as a comic writer but in fact he has a characteristic sense of humour which often involves identifying strikingly unpleasant detail or making ludicrously exaggerated claims in order to drive a point home. Here is an example of the former, from Homage to Catalonia:

 ‘In the next bed to me there was a youth with black hair who was suffering from some disease or other and was being given medicine that made his urine as green as emerald. His bed-bottle was one of the sights of the ward.’

The Road to Wigan Pier contains many examples of the latter: here is Orwell explaining what he thinks should be done to make socialism more popular with ordinary people:

‘If only the sandals and the pistachio-coloured shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaller, and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly!’

This statement is clearly not intended to be taken literally. The reader can disagree with the detail – Orwell challenges him or her to disagree with his broader point (that ordinary people are put off socialism due to its linkage with social progressiveness).

Orwell’s writing also contains numerous witty paradoxes. For instance, in Down and Out in Paris and London he criticises the conditions in restaurant kitchens in Paris as follows:

‘Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it.’

Take-home point: If you use humour in your writing, use a style of humour that is natural to you and which serves the points you are making.

10. Turn on your bullshit detector

Orwell was strongly aware of the fact that euphemistic and abstract terms can often be used to disguise the true meaning of certain language. He addressed this issue at length in Politics and the English Language, in which he states that ‘the whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness’ and blamed this on insincerity:

‘When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.’

His solution was as follows:

‘(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.’

Take-home points: Be sincere. Write concretely and directly. Consider Orwell’s rules.