Quote:
Originally Posted by sun surfer
The only Orwell I'd read before this was Animal Farm, which I liked much better. Maybe his biting writing works better in a more fantastical story?
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I have read (albeit quite some time back) and enjoyed both
1984 and
Animal Farm and thought the same thing, as you have suggested, while reading
Burmese Days. In their unreal frames exaggeration (e.g. animals that talk
) is no problem to me. In the semi-autobiographical frame coupled with closely paralleling actual historic events and societies I found his exaggerated writing did not work and came across as the work of a troubled man having a rant.
I also wondered if his change to the later fantastical style came about because he had a change of mind to believing his propaganda was better handled that way?
I had not read Forster's
Passage to India for some decades and really only recalled the story line, so I have just finished rereading it to see how he handled things. Putting aside that he was not into heavy propaganda as Blair was, Forster's book was in my view the far superior read and he appeared to me to be at some pain to represent the customs and societies of both the colonized and the colonizers in a fairer manner, and present them both as being slaves, as we all are, to those things. Whereas, in my view, Blair made his characters slaves to his propaganda and troubled mind. Perhaps Forster was at an advantage in that as far as I can make out he was a far more travelled and more worldly wise man than Blair was?