George Orwell Matters! discussion

When did you first hear about George Orwell? Do you have a memory you would like to share? Have you seen any films of his works, or studied any at school or college?

This is a double post. I'm not sure which thread it belongs in. Ignore the one that is not where it should be. :D

Hi Jean!
I was first introduced to George Orwell in Grade 9, with Animal Farm. The teacher belaboured every word used, kept referring to revolutions I hadn't heard of and twaddling on about things I wasn't interested in. Sadly, this put me off of George Orwell's writings.
When I took a University English course and 1984 was in the curriculum, I was dismayed and grateful that it was a slim book. I LOVED it!!!! So much so, that I had to go back to revisit Animal Farm and I loved that one, too. Imagine my surprise. It must have been the teaching style of the teacher in Grade 9 English and not George Orwell's writing that I didn't like.

After that I went on quite a George Orwell reading period. I don't recall every book I read and would need to reread them all to have any kind of a decent discussion but his writing is wonderful in all his books.

It's a bitter-sweet memory Petra. Thanks for sharing it with us :)

I was introduced to George Orwell in Grade 9 as well, with Animal Farm. We had a teacher I liked so reading the book was an enjoyable experience. A few years later I read 1984, well before 1984.
I reread the book a few years ago and found a bleak but also amazing read. His style is so precise and readable, deceptively simple.

I'm not sure when I first heard about Orwell. Orwell is not Dutch literature, and as such there was no literature class early on that taught his works. It must have been somewhere in my early teens that I first heard the 'big brother is watching you' about something (probably cctv-ish stuff being placed somewhere), and my dad explained as good as he could what that came from. And then there was the 'big brother' stuff with people living in a house being filmed all the time on tv. It was when I was about 17 or 18 that I read Big Brother for the first time for Literature class (my English being good enough to read actual literature instead of Harry Potter by then), and I remember that I loved it. Especially since it was in my final year of secondary school, and I had central exams in history. One of the exam subjects was communistic Russia. So reading Big Brother happily(ish) alligned with learning a lot about the period and system that inspired the book, making the impact all the bigger. Years later I read Animal Farm too, but then without in class discussion or anything, and I missed that.

That's really interesting Jantine! I had a similar experience with American literature, which was never taught at my school, and remains a sort of grey area for me!

But I also found that in some cases discovering an author for yourself can be even more mindblowing! I found that with both George Orwell (and Charles Dickens!) And then it's good to have a place to discuss in depth as well, with others who share their knowledge and enthusiasm :)

Exactly :-)
It sometimes baffles me that in movies and series children read Dickens in school at an age that would be late primary school here. Especially since at that age I just learned the word 'congratulations', let alone read Dickens. Somehow we don't have a lot of Dutch literature from Dickens' time, and the other standard Dutch literature 'classics' are not exactly age appropropriate at that age (Yes, Dutch male writers all seem(ed) to think with their d*ck), so I had buried my head deeply into children's books.

Ah, but don't you think find that the best children's books can be appreciated at any age? :) And they are sometimes more memorable too. Why did George Orwell write Animal Farm as an allegory, if not for that reason?

True. There are children's books I still love to revisit, and in my pile of books I've been reading the last couple of years a lot of YA books can be found too :-)