This study examines George Orwell's contribution to our understanding of imperialism and to political writing in general. The basic assumptions of the study are that for a creative writer plot performs essentially the same function as model-building does for the political scientist and the role of the imagination is paramount both in the drawing of a novelist's picture of environment and in a social scientist's selection of variables. To show how a creative writer can offer the student of politics an unusual perspective of various systems of government (in this case, imperialism), the study draws upon concrete examples from Orwell's novel Burmese Days and other of his related writings to illustrate a number of political science's theoretical concepts. The study is also concerned with showing how Orwell was a pacesetter, as it were, in rejecting jargon as a means of expression and instead pressing vigorously, particularly in his description of imperialism in Burmese Days, for a straightforward yet imaginative prose in describing political as well as other events. The study assumes that Orwell's plea is echoed in a succeeding generation by others such as Landau and asserts that Burmese Days has either rendered many of imperialism's more harmful clichés impotent or has at least exposed them to closer scrutiny. At the same time, despite Orwell's often vehement denunciation of imperialism, it is assumed that there is implicit in the dialogue of some of his characters a recognition that while the system of uninvited foreigners exploiting and governing another people's country may be morally repugnant, in the light of an all-embracing and privacy-invading industrialism British imperialism may have been the least offensive kind of such exploitation. The study argues that our understanding of the motivations for group behaviour may, in some cases such as imperialism, be best pursued through more intensive studies of individuals within the group rather than by investing all of our attention in observing the collective action of the group. The study has evolved not from the notion that a creative writer can ever replace the perhaps more disciplined approach of the social sciences in understanding our world, but that he can significantly aid the academic world in illustrating its theoretical concepts. Finally, it is the overriding conclusion of this study that the moderately experimental nature of its juxtaposition of social science theory and fiction is mutually beneficial to both the social scientist and the student of literature in offering them new perspectives in their respective fields of interest. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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This thesis examines stylistic technique and narrative strategy in a range of George Orwell’s fictional and non-fictional texts to demonstrate how personal experience and detached interpretation interact dialectically in his work to create layers of narrative complexity. Moving from Raymond Williams’ observation that the figure of “Orwell” is the writer’s “most successful” creation, this study asserts a vital correlation between form and content in Orwell’s work, specifically in the central position that perspective occupies in his political outlook. The multiple perspectives that surface in Orwell’s texts – the reluctant Imperial policeman, the tramp in disguise, the advocate of the working poor, the rebellious and satirically-inclined anti-totalitarian writer – correspond with the author’s life experiences, and yet are revealed as rhetorically constructed positions that are adopted strategically to generate nuanced, and at times contradictory, impressions of a wide range of subject matter. Chapter 1 treats Orwell’s Burmese writings as ethnographically-inflected texts; Chapter 2 examines the figure of the mask in Down and Out in Paris and London and in The Road to Wigan Pier; Chapter 3 analyses a dialectic of experience and interpretation at play in Homage to Catalonia; Chapter 4 scrutinizes the mobilization of the rebel writer figure in a selection of Orwell’s mature essays; and Chapter 5 examines the strategic deployment of competing perspectives in Nineteen Eighty-Four’s anatomy of the totalitarian state. This array of analytical approaches serves the dual function of highlighting the versatility and sophistication of narrative strategy across a range of individual texts in Orwell’s oeuvre, and of demonstrating a trajectory in his work that adheres simultaneously to both formal and political considerations. Orwell’s highly prolific two-decade-long writing career, I argue, can be productively understood as an ongoing experiment with narrative strategy, and this experiment exerts at each stage a direct influence on his evolving political aesthetic.