Selections from George Orwell’s Essays
1.”Such, Such were the Joys” (1952)
Your home might be far from perfect, but at least it was a place ruled by love rather
than by fear, where you did not have to be perpetually on your guard against the people
surrounding you. At eight years old you were suddenly taken out of this warm nest and
flung into a world of force and fraud and secrecy, like a gold-fish into a tank full of
pike…
All the very rich boys were more or less undisguisedly favoured…. The rich boys had
milk and biscuits in the middle of the morning, they were given riding lessons once or
twice a week, Flip mothered them and called them by their Christian names, and above
all they were never caned. …
I had no money, I was weak, I was ugly, I was unpopular, I had a chronic cough, I was
cowardly, I smelt. This picture, I should add, was not altogether fanciful. I was an
unattractive boy. St Cyprian's soon made me so, even if I had not been so before. …
Again, until after I had left school for good I continued to believe that I was
preternaturally ugly. It was what my schoolfellows had told me, and I had no other
authority to refer to. The conviction that it was not possible for me to be a success went
deep enough to influence my actions till far into adult life.
2. “Shooting and Elephant” (1936)
In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people. I was a police
officer in the town … anti-European feeling was very bitter … at that time I had
already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked
up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically — and secretly, of course — I was
all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was
doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see
the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the
stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the
scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos — all these oppressed
me with an intolerable sense of guilt … I had had to think out my problems in the utter
silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.
3. “The Spike”
You are a gentleman?’ (tramp), ‘I suppose so,’ I said. (Orwell). He gave me another
long look. ‘Well, that’s bloody bad luck’ he said, ‘that’s bloody bad luck, that is.’
It was a disgusting sight, that bathroom. All the indecent secrets of our underwear were
exposed… . The room became a press of steaming nudity, the sweaty odours of the
tramps competing with the sickly, sub-faecal stench native to the spike. Some of the
men refused the bath, and washed only their ‘toe-rags’ … Each of us had three minutes
in which to bathe himself. Six greasy, slippery roller towels had to serve for the lot of
us.
