Why Orwell’s 1984 Is So Bleak
posted by Daniel Solove
According to this article, the drab and dismal world portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 was in part influenced by his bouts with illness:
The new study, by John Ross of Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, recounts Orwell’s sickly life. . . .
Orwell was born in India in 1903 as Eric Blair. He suffered multiple bouts of bronchitis and other respiratory ailments, Ross writes. As a young man, Orwell had several episodes of bacterial pneumonia, and also contracted dengue fever while in Burma. He was a heavy smoker, and he suffered fits of coughing from a condition called bronchiectasis. . . .
[D]epressed by his wife’s death, Orwell moved to a windy and damp Scottish island. His health worsened significantly just as he was working on the first draft of “1984,” Ross reports. Fever, weight loss, and night sweats sent him to the hospital, where he underwent “collapse therapy,” a treatment designed to close the dangerous cavities that form in the chests of tuberculosis patients. . . .
“Orwell himself told his friends that 1984 would have been less gloomy had he not been so ill—it was a very dark, disturbing, and pessimistic work,” Ross said. Orwell’s illnesses “made him a better and more empathetic writer, in that his sense of human suffering made his writing more universal.”
I wonder what a less gloomy 1984 would have read like — Brave New World perhaps?
October 21, 2005 at 1:44 am
Posted in: Law and Humanities, Privacy
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Responses (4)
steve - October 21, 2005 at 8:10 pm
“I wonder what a less gloomy 1984 would have read like — Brave New World perhaps?”
I wonder what Huxley’s “vision” of Brave New World would have been like had he written it in the 50s during his heavy mescaline use. (Not that there wasn’t already enough soma to go around in the book!)
Jenae Murray - April 3, 2007 at 9:04 am
I am writing a research paper regarding the effects of tuberculosis in george orwell’s writings. do you have any other information that would be useful to me? Could I maybe quote u in my paper.
Peter Hoffman - May 18, 2007 at 1:50 am
My Grandfather and my father treated George Orwell’s TB
Peter Hoffman - May 18, 2007 at 1:59 am
Jenae Murray
You can contact me at peterhoffman@netvigator.com
About Orwell’s TB
By Grandfather and Father treated his TB
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