Why We’ll Always Be Talking about George Orwell

“It is a shame, though, that whenever Orwell reappears it is almost always in the context of his dystopian political novel.”

George Orwell seems to come in and out of the news. It is usually politics that brings him back. Certain segments of the political right revitalize Orwell in our dystopian fears, now often emanating from excessive left-wing zealots and their policing of speech and thought, to which #1984 trends on social media before fading away. It is a shame, though, that whenever Orwell reappears it is almost always in the context of his dystopian political novel. We forget that Orwell was a master essayist, and despite the conservative appropriation of Orwell, the sage of humane English socialism was, and remained, a dedicated socialist throughout his life.

That Orwell is forgotten for having been one of the preeminent English essayists of the 20th century is unsurprising. It is indicative of the larger desecration of the humane tradition of letters, of which he was among the last great generation of writers to flourish. Orwell lived in a world before the 280-character hot take on Twitter, the 30 second spiel on TikTok, or the seductive but ultimately unsubstantial world of YouTube that is premised more on visuality and polemical acting than serious substance. Yet it is in his essays, and not his novels—of which people only remember Nineteen Eighty-Four and maybe Animal Farm—that the enduring relevance of Orwell is found.

I have loved Orwell since high school. My love for Orwell grows every year. In Advanced Placement (AP) English and AP History, we read Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm respectively. At that time in my life, my AP English teacher gave me her copy of Christopher Hitchens’s Why Orwell Matters. Since then, Orwell has only grown in relevance to my maturation and life.