George Orwell expresses a feeling of
alienation throughout "Such, Such Were the Joys...." He casts himself as a misfit, unable to
understand his peers, the authorities placed over him, and the laws that govern
his existence. Orwell writes, "The
good and the possible never seemed to coincide" (37). Though he shows his ability to enumerate what
is "good," he resigns himself to a predestined state; uncertain of
where exactly he fits in society, his attitude is irreconcilable with what he
knows society expects of him. Orwell's
childhood understanding of society forces him into only one possible direction,
failure. This essay is the maturing
Orwell's response to childhood subjugation, a subtle exposure to the evolution
of Orwell's thought.
Orwell's life as a boarding school student
at Crossgates occupies his memory of childhood and serves as the platform for
his views on life. Repeatedly Orwell
describes the society of the school from which he is outcast:
That bump on the
hard mattress, on the first night of term, used to give me a feeling of abrupt
awakening, a feeling of: 'This is reality, this is what you are up against.'
Your home might be far from perfect, but at least it was a place ruled by love
rather than by fear, where you did not have to be perpetually taken out of this
warm nest and flung into a world of force and fraud and secrecy, like a
goldfish into a tank full of pike. (23)
Young Orwell,
impacted by this, "hard," disorienting situation, realizes he is
alone in a hostile, harsh environment.
Orwell uses the image of the "warm nest," a womb, from which
the child is thrown, then innocently forced into a destructive reality. This reality is Crossgates, an educational
institution but also a primary residence, the "home" Orwell lives in
on a daily basis for a number of years.
Far from the "love" of his familial home, Orwell finds that
Crossgates does not nurture nor raise a boy to manhood, but rather destroys all
that he loves and trusts. Hopelessly
dominated in this environment, he is compelled to accept a mentality of
insecurity and inferiority and becomes the fodder of others--the winners of
society.
Sim and Bingo, the spiritual and emotional
guides of Crossgates, feed off of this pitiful mentality and their carefully
constructed school environment.
By the social
standards that prevailed about me, I was no good, and could not be any
good. But all the different kinds of
virtue seemed to be mysteriously interconnected and to belong to much the same
people. It was not only money that
mattered: there were also strength, beauty, charm, athleticism, and something
called 'guts' or 'character,' which in reality meant the power to impose your
will on others. (36-37)
Sim and Bingo
manipulate their young students by connecting virtue to superficial qualities
they can judge subjectively. Orwell
possesses none of these qualities, and actually exemplifies all that would be
considered bad. At the same time,
however, the master and mistress of school impress upon their young subject
that he is a "scholarship boy," one who is to be a boon to the school
and attract all those prospective students who exemplify their virtues. The irony of this situation characterizes
young Orwell's difficulties. By design,
he must serve the interests of his oppressors and be thankful for the
opportunity to do so while they destine him to be a hopeless failure and social
pariah. Orwell is instructed to tie
goodness to "power" and tyranny.
He is deemed virtueless and therefore the natural subject of those who
are virtuous.
The introductory, poignant tale of
bedwetting epitomizes Orwell's alienating education. As the author describes
his childhood situation, "I knew that bed-wetting was a)wicked and
b)outside my control" (5). Faced by an embarrassing problem he cannot
understand or help, the eight-year old Orwell condemns himself as a sinner,
following that which he is preached. Without thinking, questioning or
understanding, he blindly accepts the morality presented him. The school
establishment shuns and castigates him, teaching him through fiery sermons and
corporal punishment to hate himself for his incorrigible actions. Sim and Bingo, the benefactors of this
psychologically ailing "scholarship" student, aid him in no way,
adding only to his misery.
Orwell reacts to this treatment as he was
instructed to act, obeying the role designed for him by his tormentors. He thinks such thoughts as, "It was
possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed it, and
without being able to avoid it. Sin was
not necessarily something you did it might be something that happened to
you" and "[t]his was the great, abiding lesson of my boyhood: that I
was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good" (5). This is the result of a child's flawed, but
logical process of thought. Though he realizes that which is conveyed to him
bodes his own rejection and eventual destruction, he listens to the conveyance
because it originates from people he is supposed to listen to. Orwell believed
with conviction that he actively "committed" intentional wrong
without willing it because he was innately inferior.
Indoctrinated by this philosophy and
assuming a fatalist, defeatist mentality, Orwell knows he is doomed to
failure. "Until I was about thirty
I always planned my life on the assumption not only that any major undertaking
was bound to fail, but that I could only expect to live a few years
longer" (38). The trauma of his
childhood experience at Crossgates had an enormous impact on the author,
persisting long after maturity. His
thought is centered around the principle of failure, and therefore his entire
existence is purposeless. Orwell lives much of his life believing, in essence,
that he does not belong amongst the living.
This defeatist mentality pervades the
daily life of young Orwell. He
obediently not only prepares himself for self-destruction, but also assumes the
rest of the world is out to destroy him.
Relating one of the few joyous moments of his youth, buying candy,
Orwell is interrupted by his own fears of wrongdoing and detection. "I assumed that any adult, inside the
school or outside, would collaborate voluntarily in preventing us from breaking
the rules. Sim was all-powerful, and it
was natural that his agents should be everywhere" (16). Orwell moves beyond feelings of
isolation. He possesses no avenue to
vent his frustration; forced into his own developing mind, Orwell takes on a
'me against the world' attitude. The
world becomes a grand conspiracy and all other characters collaborators,
prepared at any turn to pin him as guilty for another inexplicable crime. Alone and battling all of reality, Orwell
completes his alienation from society.
Orwell inserts in his essay on childhood
the musings of his rational, contemplative adult self. His commentary reflects evolution beyond the
indoctrinated mentality he states to have retained "until I was
thirty." There is a general
rejection of all the mindless, unquestioning instruction of his youth. Orwell reminisces, "The schoolmasters
with their canes, the millionaires with their Scottish castles, the athletes
with their curly hair-these were the armies of the unalterable law. It was not easy, at that date, to realise
that in fact it was alterable" (37). As a reflective individual, Orwell
looks to his childhood and realizes that he allowed himself to capitulate his
identity and allowed others, others he hated, to define his existence. He does,
eventually, "see beyond the moral dilemma that is presented to the weak in
a world governed by the strong: Break the rules, or perish" (40).
Orwell enumerates the maturation of his
thought. He rejects "religion, for
instance" because "the whole business of religion seemed to be strewn
with psychological impossibilities" (36-37). On the same pages he rids himself of the
burden of harrowing authority figures.
"Obviously it was my duty to feel grateful towards Bingo and Sim;
but I was not grateful. It was equally
clear that one ought to love one's father, but I knew very well that I merely
disliked my own father." He rebukes
the English boarding school system (47) and the manner in which children are
taught, "crammed with learning as cynically as a goose is crammed for
Christmas" (8). Orwell repudiates
the English class system as well, the very system that defined his place in
childhood (43). He rejects all that he
was taught to believe right and virtuous as a child. He was pressured to believe without thinking,
and as a naive child he did so. As a
man, however, he condemns his former ideology, understanding that to be a man
he must forge his own process of thought.
Orwell realizes that it is logically
impossible to collaborate with the old system on any level. Persevering through the trauma of his youth,
he creates a new system of reality defined only by himself and his
rationale. A child born to the world
completely handicapped, rendered incapable by societal standards, Orwell
institutes his own rules to play by in the game of life. He is able to redefine good and bad through
his own faculty of thought so that what is good and possible do coincide.
"Such, Such Were the Joys..."
reveals the creation of George Orwell, prolific writer and social critic. The author describes, with some presumed
exaggeration and inaccuracy, the origins of his later thought and aspects of
his childhood that molded him into a well-respected man and author. He relates to the reader his necessary
evolution in thought from misunderstanding and alienation to a state of mind
which produced such novel works as "Shooting an Elephant," Animal
Farm, and 1984. Orwell consistently
analyzes the society in which he was inexorably involved, questioning its
standards and the path it was taking into the future. Orwell, whether it is he himself or he
speaking through one of his characters, always appears alone, an alienated but
thinking resistor to mass opinion.
WORK CITED:
Orwell, George. A
Collection of Essays. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1981.
No comments:
Post a Comment