Biography
Originally named Eric Blair, Orwell was born on June 25, 1903 in a British colony in India. He was born from English parents, he had two other sisters, he was the second oldest. He excelled in school and was soon after recommended to St. Cyprian, one of the most successful schools at that time, he then on moved to gain scholarships for both St. Cyprian and Eton. After high school, he did not have enough money to attend college so he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, soon after he returned to England because he hated the Imperialism there. For a few years Orwell lived in poverty to experience what life was like for the lower class, and he had grown to see how the higher class suppressed the lower class. He fought in the Spanish Civil War for the republicans against the communists, his hate towards communism lead him to write the novel Animal Farm.
Animal Farm
His experiences from being in the police and fighting in the war caused him to sympathise and empathize for the lower class. His job in the police taught him how easily the lower class could be suppressed, and from his participation fighting against the communists, he learned how easily totalitarian propaganda could control the opinions of democratic people. After seeing a child whip a horse, Orwell decided he would write a fable to attack the communists and bring out his opinion, to show how communism affected the citizens negatively. He chose Stalin as an example of communists, and used his links to Stalin and the Russian Revolution to show that communism is a poor ideology by revealing the dark sided truth of it. His years of living in poverty helped him write about the difficulties of the lower class, how there were suppressed and manipulated by the oppressors.