I. George Orwell [Childhood & Student]

စာေရးသူသည္ ၿပီးခဲ႕သည္႕ ႏွစ္မ်ားက ဂ်န္ပန္ၿပည္ တိုက်ိဳၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ေနထိုင္စဥ္ ကာလအတြင္္း သူငယ္ခ်င္းတစ္ေယာက္ အတြက္ ကူညီ၍ သူမ၏ အေနာက္တိုင္း စာေပယဥ္ေက်းမႈ မာစတာ ဘြဲ႕အတြက္ George Orwell ကို ေလ႕လားေရးသားခဲ႕ၾက ပါသည္။ ၿပဳစုေရးသားခဲ႕သည္ စာတမ္းကို စာဖတ္သူမ်ား အား ေဖာက္သည္္ခ်လိုသည္႕ အတြက္ ၿပန္လည္ရွာေဖြကာ ေဖၚၿပေပးထားပါသည္။

Biography

1.Childhood
The genuine name of George Orwell was Eric Arthur Blair. He was born on 25th June, 1903 in Bengal State (Motihari), India. His father, Richard Blair, was Scottish English and worked for Indian civil service. Mother, Ida Mabel Limouzin, was daughter of French timber merchant and English mother in Burma. Eric had two sisters, who were five years older and younger.

When Eric was three years old, the family apart from his father moved to Henley, the town beside Thames River, and then to London. Orwell’s memories of his childhood in Henley were bright and detailed. He remembered the seemingly endless days devoted to such innocent pursuits as swimming, climbing trees, playing with tin soldiers, strolling along the towpath, bird-nesting and picking blackberries in narrow lanes. Whatever the realities of Edwardian life may have been, he preferred to judge it according to his experience of the stable, prosperous environment in Henley.

When he was eight years old, his father resigned from job and returned to his native country. After his father resignation and back to England, they all had to live with just little pension. His family can be described as the life of low-upper-middle class and he grew up from ordinary existence of family life.

He was a chubby boy in his childhood, with few physical talents. And he was indeed a sensitive child. He liked to stay alone and always reflected on himself. He learned to read at an early age and spent his free time with many books.

Looking back on my own childhood, after the infant years
were over, I do not believe that I ever felt love for any
mature person, except my mother, and even her, I did not
trust, in the sense that shyness made me conceal most of
my real feelings from her.Such, Such Were the Joys: The
Orwell Reader, 454.

His early literatures were the consequence of his isolated childhood and imagination of conversation with imaginary persons. His mother was the first to understanding his talent of words, and she supported to using it. He composed a poem when he was only four or five years old. His first published poem appeared in a local newspaper when he was eleven years old.

Eric had always desired his father’s good opinion, but he had never been able to establish a close relationship with him, in large part because they had spent so little time together during Eric’s childhood. Until he was eight he hardly saw his father, who was always away in India. By the time his father returned home to enjoy his retirement, he was already away at boarding school, and their later together during school holidays was short and generally uncomfortable. He wrote that his father had appeared to him as;

I knew very well that I merely disliked my own father, whom
I had barely seen before I was eight and who appeared to me
simply as a gruff-voiced elderly man forever saying “Don’t.”
Such, Such Were the Joys: The Orwell Reader,448.

When Eric turned eight, it was decided that he was ready to leave home. Recognizing her son’s intellectual potential, Mrs Blair worried to place him in a preparatory school with a good record of sending boys to Eton or to one of the other famous public schools. Most of his childhood can be symbolized as a very normal and uncomplicated boy growing under the roof of family.

2. Student
He entered Saint Cyprian’s private school located in southeast area of England at eight years old. The school was only allowed high class and the best for preparation to enter most famous public schools. He joined one of such schools and the class he attended was lower stratum of upper middle class but no lower class.

The reason he joined to the school was simply for prestige and pride. Even there were much trouble with expensive cost to learn magnificent education. Most of middle class parents wanted their children to learn such education system and to their children be able to involve in higher class. His parents also wished him to enter this school.

Recognizing that he was a bright boy who might bring credit to the school. Therefore, the head master of Saint Cyprian’s had accepted him at half-fees. According to him, he was made to suffer for this ostensible act of charity.

Furthermore, primary school aged has mostly no sympathy for humble student but just bullying and contempt. Everyday he felt troublesome as most of the children from rich and high class family in his school were usually favored, and they bully other poor and low class students.

As Orwell wrote it in ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’, St Cyprian’s appeared to have been a prison camp slyly disguised as a supremely preparatory school.

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. I did not possess any of these
qualities.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. Such, Such Were the Joys: The Orwell
Reader,446

And he described in ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’,

Probably the greatest cruelty one can inflict on a child is to
send it to school among children richer than itself. A child
conscious of poverty will suffer snobbish agonies such as a
grown-up person can scarcely imagine. In those days,
especially at his preparatory school, Gordon’s life had been
one long conspiracy to keep his end up and pretend that his
parents were richer than they were. Ah, the humiliations of
those days! That awful business, for instance, at the
beginning …or more. And the time when the others found
out that Gordon was wearing a ready-made suit which had
cost thirty-five shillings!,Keep the Aspidistra Flying.49

During six years in this preparatory school, he got not benefit but his loneliness, stunt and disgust became more severe. One unforgettable thing was that severe filthy feeling grew as mechanical process of cramming facts into young mind due to strict discipline, administrative system, rules and regulations of the school. Summer camp for competition, underfeeding and rare bath in hostel, such plenty disciplines cause great trouble for him.

Based on his disgusting student life, it was reasonable that he hate systematization and regulation so much. That was also because he was not a type who can enjoy in systematized organization, and not a friendly person who could make a good relationship immediately.

Eric was nine and twelve years old, his family lived in the small village of Shiplake, which occupied a peaceful spot along the Thames some two miles south of Henley. Eric loved Shiplake. There were beautiful fields and woods could be seen and the river banks reached on foot within a short moment.

Eric won the school’s Classics Prize before he left St. Cyprian’s. And in June 1916, the news arrived that he was the first runner up in the Harrow History Prize. In March 1917, he had finally received his scholarship at Eton, but he did not accept it.

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