Collection of Essays by George Orwell

A Collection of Essays
George Orwell
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1945-1953.

Topics:
Crossgates School where he was not the "right" kind of boy.
Dickens
Dickens’s criticism of institutions: change the spirit, not the institution.
Kipling: a jingo who wrote in platitudes.
Colonialism: “Shooting an Elephant.” White man is a slave to native expectations.
Politics and the English language: improve language and therefore, improve thinking.
Gandhi: self-aggrandizement?
The Spanish Civil War: the horrors of real war.

Orwell concludes by saying that throughout all of his life his writing was directly or indirectly against totalitarianism.

After railing against misuse of the English language in his essay, "Politics and the English Language," Orwell admits that readers will easily find examples of the same mistakes he has criticized in his own writing.

A sampling of quotes:
“I have never been back to Crossgates…. And if I went inside and smelt again the inky, dusty smell of the big school room, the rosiny smell of the chapel, the stagnant smell of the swimming bath and the cold reek of the lavatories, I think I should only feel what one invariably feels in revisiting any scene of childhood: how small everything has grown, and how terrible is the deterioration in myself.” p. 47.

“If you hate violence and don’t believe in politics, the only major remedy remaining is education.” p. 59.

“No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens.” p. 60.

“Dickens sees human beings with the most intense vividness….” p. 82.

“…before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works…. It is no use pretending that Kipling’s view of life…can be accepted or even forgiven by any civilized person…. Kipling is a jingo imperialist…. It is better to start by admitting that, and then to try to find out why it is that he survives….” p. 116.

“It is no use pretending that in an age like our own, ‘good’ poetry can have genuine popularity. It is, and must be, the cult of a very few people, the least tolerated of the arts.” p. 129.

“He [Kipling] dealt largely in platitudes, and since we live in a world of platitudes, much of what he said sticks.” p. 132.

“Our civilization is decadent and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to airplanes.” p. 156.

“Each of these passages has faults of its own, but…two qualities are common to all of them: the first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision.” p. 158.

“Dying metaphors…worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples: take up the cudgels, to the line, etc. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning.” p. 159.

“In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining).” p. 160.

“Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that…in the interests of….” p. 160.