Evil Orwell: An Essay

A brief preface reexamines Orwell's credentials as a better angel of our nature. Chapter 1 shows how Orwell's notions actually enhance totalitarian rule, sowing defeatism and despair rather than a clarion call to arms. His views on language, the motivations of Ingsoc coupled with his own suspicious background open up another view of Orwell as agent saboteur of democracy and justice. Chapter 2 points out the double lies of Orwellian perspectives and of modern life in general. Notions that property disposition and not morals is the true cause of evil, for example, belies the plain truth that property is not germane to evil as such, any more than the knife is the murderer that the murderer uses.