Welmer

I came across an essay titled "Politics and the English Language" a few days ago and read it before going to bed. It was written by Orwell in 1946, and remains relevant today. However, the examples he uses to make his point that indirect, vague and obfuscating prose has a real influence on our thought and use of language are stark compared to the problems we face today. I was born almost 30 years after World War II ended, and I have only recently begun to understand how dark those years were, including the years directly after the war. The dawn of the nuclear age, the revelations of slavery and mass murder in Europe as well as the USSR, the emergence of the Cold War — all were menacing clouds that rapidly overshadowed the joy of victory.

In the face of these horrors, Orwell advocates discipline in writing; a clear-minded portrayal of reality for the sake of humanity. Given his experience and the circumstances of the times, it isn’t surprising that there is a martial quality to his campaign for more effective and direct use of English. Above all, Orwell sees language as a tool that should be used in the service of mankind, so he deplores writing that "falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details." Insincere and indirect writing are detriments to his cause – if not outright enemies – because they cloak barbarous threats to peace and decency in meaningless phrases that "anaesthetize a portion of one’s brain."

Orwell’s stern reminder of the consequences of language, its tendency to be abused and of the obligation to be vigilant against drifting into the semi-conscious lull of convention leaves the reader feeling like a new recruit facing a drill sergeant, and this must have been his intent. He was a soldier who understood the importance of discipline as well as the need to discard useless burdens, and he applies these rules to his art, which is created with a soldierly purpose. His explicit goal in the essay is the "defense of the English language," which he optimistically suggests is "probably curable."

Sadly, Orwell was fighting in vain. In the 62 years since he wrote Politics and the English Language his foes have only grown stronger, the phrases he deplored have not, for the most part, been rejected, and in the cruelest irony (for us — he probably knew it) some of his own metaphors have lost their edge from overuse. Even the academic writing he sampled to point out examples of abuse reads as fresh, clear and reasonable compared to most of the unreadable sludge that oozes out from university print shops today.

It may be that the upheavals and terror that Orwell’s generation survived are a precondition for the philosophical determination, devoid of fanciful illusions of chivalry, unwilling to be satisfied with mere gestures of speech, that characterizes his writing. And perhaps it was the same determination that brought the world back to war to settle the unfinished business of the Great War, and then to the brink of nuclear war, because to compromise after such sacrifice for convictions would have been unthinkable. In his writing, it is clear what we were fighting, and, from the perspective of the time, why we had to.

The soldiers of the 20th century, men who lived through disaster after disaster, turned the wisdom they gained from merely surviving the spasms of a world violently delivered into modernity toward the creation of a better world, and they succeeded. Their legacy, though wearing thin, remains, but their lessons are ignored if not forgotten. The grim determination, the profound understanding of the inevitability of consequences, and the philosophical depth gained from carrying on through that troubled century lie buried in graves marked with fading names.

In the written records left by the Lost Generation, one can still find the spirit of those lost days lingering like an old photograph in the yellowing, fragile pages of an ancient book. But even in their works of literature they were not effusive people, and subtlety is all but lost in our world of brilliant screens, blaring speakers and electronic communication, so we live our lives amidst a wilderness of light and sound, largely unconscious of the underlying ruins of their bygone civilization.

In Orwell’s writing, the degeneration of language itself becomes a metaphor for squandered gains, carelessness and the unconscious rush of the herd toward the edge of a cliff. His humanity compelled him to warn us and to fight against it, but the genius and tragedy of his vision was its prophecy.