Eric Arthur Blair, pen name George Orwell, wished to “escape from…every form of man’s dominion over man.”
Orwell, far more impressive as a moral critic than as a constructive political thinker, was a kind of literary proletarian who lived in dire straits for most of his life, and began to earn serious money from his writing only when he was approaching death.
The case for the defense is that Orwell was a magnificently courageous opponent of political oppression, a man of unswerving moral integrity and independence of spirit…
He was not, to be sure, always objective… Orwell abandoned socialism; yet he died ‘unable to offer any positive alternative to pessimism and fear’.