Creator / George Orwell
George Orwell reporting for the Ministry of Tru... I mean The BBC.

Paul Potts

Real name Eric Blair, George Orwell (June 25, 1903 — January 21, 1950) was one of the most influential authors in the English language.

A democratic socialist all his life, but his views changed somewhat over time and his dislike of Soviet communism was very clear. Orwell, a journalist, participated in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans, serving in the party militia of the P.O.U.M. or Party of Marxist Worker's Unificationnote , and even got shot in the throat (an experience that he would go on to describe as "interesting"). His works tend to be considered cynical. The term "Orwellian" is named after his famous works of dystopian fiction, particularly Nineteen Eighty-Four.note 

His most famous works are:

Orwell created the following tropes:

Several additional tropes were inspired by Newspeak, including:

George Orwell is the source of several trope names:

He is also the current mascot for the "Have a Nice Cup of Tea and Sit Down" page. He considered tea to be Serious Business. Spot of Tea, indeed.

Orwell's work provides examples of:

  • Badass Biker: Orwell acquired a four-cylinder motorcycle of American manufacture just after his arrival in Burmanote  and went through several funny adventures while riding it in the Burman countryside. While in Britain he owned a 500cc Rudge-Whitworth motorcycle, which he rode in all weather on the worst roads and abandoned on the Isle of Jura shortly before death. The bike had been rediscovered in 2006.
  • Crapsack World: Orwell paints a very depressing view of mankind, colonialism, dictatorships, bureaucratism and corruption of revolutions.
  • Dead Artists Are Better: Orwell died after finishing 1984. He would become more famous after death and especially as the year 1984 approached.
  • Downer Ending: Pretty much all his stories have these. 1984 is a truly disheartening example.
    • Ironically enough, as editor of short stories sent into the Tribune, he openly complained about the tendency in (then) modern writing towards the Downer Ending and the belief that True Art Is Angsty.
  • Eponym: Orwellian has become a byword for dystopian futures and totalitarian societies, and use of propaganda.
    • However, it turns out according to his biographer Bernard Crick that this was largely made up by Orwell. According to a Burmese local, there was no escaped animal rampage and Orwell shot that Elephant either for sport or by accident. There was an official government complaint since the Elephant was regarded as valuable government property and Orwell was promptly Reassigned to Antarctica with Colonel Welbourne calling him a "a disgrace to Eton College." His biographer, noted that the essay first appeared in an anthology that encouraged writers to blend fact-and-fiction, though he noted that Orwell never tried to correct the record.note 
  • The Generalissimo: Orwell wrote a lot about totalitarianism and the dangers of such regimes. It's a recurring theme in his entire work.
  • Hitler Ate Sugar: This trope was pointed out as early as 1944, when George Orwell wrote in What is Fascism? that "It will be seen that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, it is used even more wildly than in print." Orwell names a Long List of often opposing groups accused of fascism. It would seem that, according to Orwell, almost any group at the time had been accused of fascism by linking it to some policy in Fascist Italy or National Socialist Germany. So even at a time when fascism was still a going concern, it already had devolved into being used this way.
  • The Horseshoe Effect: A recurrent theme in both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Given the increased criticism of the accuracy of his writing, and how Orwell himself took his partisan grudges against leftists to the extent of creating a list of government subversives for the government, one might see his own work as self-demonstrating this effect.
  • Humans Are Bastards: Except in the case of Animal Farm, where the animals too can be bastards.
  • Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Orwell was very concerned over the way language could be manipulated by people to justify their means. This was a constant theme in his entire work.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: His books are pretty bleak and frightening. Especially Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  • Not So Above It All:
    • In 1949, shortly before his death, Orwell prepared a list of writers he suspected of being communist and leftist "fellow travelers" to the British government. He was under the impression that many of the people on the list were Stalinists, yet the list itself includes tiny remarks next to names noting some as "Jewish", others such as Paul Robeson as "anti-white"note  and also naming Charlie Chaplin. In the end, Orwell too loved Big Brother.
    • His main thesis was this trope, arguing that everybody, to some extent or other, used totalitarian tactics and "logic" when defending their viewpoints, meaning that even the UK or US could fall to dictatorship one day, and nobody would care.
  • Only Sane Man: Postured himself as the only leftist in all the world to see Stalin for who he truly was. This is probably an exaggeration.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: All of Orwell's books were inspired by the politics of his lifetime and his fears how society would develop further.
    • Homage to Catalonia was about his firsthand experiences during the Spanish Civil War, Animal Farm was a satire on the Russian Revolution, and 1984 summarized all his fears about Nazism, Fascism and Communism. Of course Orwell could exaggerate "real life" as in the "Shooting the Elephant" essay.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: He fled from Republican Spain after the Communists began to suppress opposition.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Just about all of his works are heavily cynical.
  • Sliding Scale of Libertarianism and Authoritarianism: Orwell himself was firmly down the libertarian end of the scale. At one point in life he apparently considered himself an anarchist, and remained a committed libertarian socialist for the entirety of his life. His settings, on the other hand, are often some of the most nightmarish authoritarian dystopias ever imagined.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Some of Orwell's essays and writings have been regarded as this by later writers. Most notably, Orwell's criticism of his childhood at boarding school has been regarded as unfairly mean and disrespectful to the school headmaster. Julian Barnes has also pointed out that Orwell made several errors in the "Shooting an Elephant" essay, where he sweetened his own role in the stated incident. It is also a fact that the non-Stalinist left existed independently of him, in contrast to what is said at Only Sane Man above.