In his essay “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell argues that politicians twist and pervert the English language in order to support terrible goals. To remedy the situation, Orwell proposes six rules for strong writing, which constitute the heart of his literary philosophy. In essence, Orwell champions sparse and simple prose whenever possible, and rejects complications introduced by jargon and foreign terms.
Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s two greatest and most well-known novels, reflect his dedication to simplicity and clarity. The language in the two novels is crisp and concise, without excessive description or commentary. However, it nevertheless conveys a wealth of information regarding the author’s intentions, and in fact generates a more ominous atmosphere through its sparseness. Orwell, through his excellent command of words, accomplishes in concision what other writers could not hope to do in loquacity.
The two novels are also tinged with animosity at the ability of those who corrupt a language to corrupt its people. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell attacks the systematic perversion of English into “Newspeak”, a language of few words and even fewer ideas contrived by government autocrats to rob the populace of the ability to express ideas contrary to those of the ruling party. Orwell more specifically attacks politicians in Animal Farm by painting the character of Squealer, a lawyerly pig who uses extravagant arguments founded upon the twisting of language to support Napoleon (Stalin’s doppelganger)’s undesirable aims.
