ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE

MYP YEAR 3
INFORMATION SHEET
HARMONY VERSUS HOSTILITY
 AUTHOR’S STUDY OF GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell, pseudonym of Eric
Arthur Blair, was born June 25,
1903, Motihari, Bengal, India—died
January 21, 1950, London, England). He
was an English novelist, essayist, and
critic famous for his novels Animal
Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-
four (1949), the latter a profound anti-
utopian novel that examines the dangers
of totalitarian rule.
Born Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell never
entirely abandoned his original name, but
his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, appeared in 1933 as the work of George Orwell
(the surname he derived from the beautiful River Orwell in East Anglia). In time his nom de plume
became so closely attached to him that few people but relatives knew his real name was Blair. The
change in name corresponded to a profound shift in Orwell’s lifestyle, in which he changed from
a pillar of the British imperial establishment into a literary and political rebel.
Orwell won scholarships to two of England’s leading schools, Wellington and Eton, and briefly
attended the former before continuing his studies at the latter, where he stayed from 1917 to
1921. He served in a number of country stations and at first appeared to be a model imperial
servant. Yet from boyhood he had wanted to become a writer, and when he realized how much
against their will the Burmese were ruled by the British, he felt increasingly ashamed of his role
as a colonial police officer.
In 1927 Orwell, on leave to England, decided not to return to Burma, and on January 1, 1928, he
took the decisive step of resigning from the imperial police. Already in the autumn of 1927 he had
started on a course of action that was to shape his character as a writer.
In 1944 Orwell finished Animal Farm, a political fable based on the story of the Russian
Revolution and its betrayal by Joseph Stalin. In the book a group of barnyard animals overthrow
and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own.
Eventually the animals’ intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution and
form a dictatorship whose bondage is even more oppressive and heartless than that of their former
human masters. (“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”) At first
Orwell had difficulty finding a publisher for the small masterpiece, but when it appeared in
1945, Animal Farm made him famous and, for the first time, prosperous.
BOOKS WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR

• 1933 – Down and Out in Paris and London

• 1934 – Burmese Days

• 1935 – A Clergyman’s Daughter

• 1936 – Keep the Aspidistra Flying

• 1937 – The Road to Wigan Pier

• 1938 – Homage to Catalonia

• 1939 – Coming Up for Air

• 1945 – Animal Farm

• 1949 – Nineteen Eighty-Four

Reference Link:

https://content.schoolinsites.com/api/documents/6900ce211ce94bdc9dbb3f35999c0868.pdf
 ALLEGORY
An Allegory is a form of extended metaphor. It a story with two meanings which is the literal
meaning and the symbolic meaning. The underlying meaning of an allegory has moral, social,
religious, or political significance. In an allegory, characters are often personifications of abstract
ideas as charity, greed, or envy. An allegory continues throughout the entire text.

▪ The Pilgrim’s Progress

 The Russian Revolution
In the 19th century, Russia was a very unequal country. Most of the people who lived there were
very poor and had little education. They had tough lives and were bossed around their rulers. The
main Russian ruler was known as the Tsar. The Tsar had all the power in Russia. There were no
elections, no parliament, and no democracy. The Tsar could do what he wanted.
Many of the Russian people disliked this. They were treated terribly, some of them
hardly any better than slaves. They had to work hard but all the product of their
hard work was taken by the rich upper-class Russians who did no work at all.
The ordinary Russian people started to protest against this system of government.
They said that instead of being run by the Tsar, they wanted to be run by a system
called communism.
Communism was a system of government that had been invented by a German man
called Karl Marx. Under communism, everyone would be equal. Everyone would work the same
amount and everyone would get the same amount of money and food. Marx said it would be much
fairer than being ruled by someone like the Tsar.
In 1917, the Russian people rebelled against their leader, Tsar
Nicholas II. This event was known as the Russian Revolution. The
leaders of the Revolution were the communists. The Russian
Revolution was led by a man called Lenin. Lenin died about ten years
after the revolution.
During the Russian Revolution, the Tsar was killed and all of the other
rich people were either killed or had to leave Russia. After Lenin died,
the two leaders of communist Russia were called Joseph Stalin and
Leon Trotsky. Trotsky had led the Russian army when it defeated the rich Russians in 1918.
However, Stalin was in control of the secret police.
The communists were now the established rulers of Russia. But the communist rulers soon began
arguing amongst themselves. Stalin and Trotsky disagreed with how the country should be run.
To make things worse, the communists did not give the ordinary people any more freedom that
they had under the Tsar. They didn’t allow people to vote on who the ruler should be and they
didn’t allow people to speak their minds.
George Orwell had watched developments in Russia with a keen eye. To begin with, he liked the
general idea of communism because he thought it was much fairer than any other system of
government. But he was upset by what he saw happening in Russia. He felt that Stalin had betrayed
the true meaning of communism, and that he had become just as bad as the Tsars who he had

replaced.
Reference Link:
Questions to consider about the Russian Revolution
1. Why did the people in Russia want to rebel against their leaders?
2. What are the main principles of communism?
3. Who led the Russian Revolution?
4. Which two people were in charge of Russia after the Russian Revolution?
5. Were people in Russia better off after the Revolution?

Here are some characters in the Animal Farm that are an allegory for the Russian
Revolution.