By Ed Qauttrocchi
Read at the dinner
of the Chicago Literary Club at the Fortnightly Club on October 6, 2008
It
is an honor to inaugurate the 135th year of the Chicago Literary
Club. The Literary Club, like the Fortnightly Club, has a long and proud
tradition. I thank the Fortnightly Club officers and members for encouraging
our relationship and inviting us to share this commodious home for several of
our joint meetings every year. Our clubs
are two of the oldest in Chicago, dedicated to the tradition of free and open
discussion of literature and culture. This spirit goes back to the founders of
our clubs and to the founders of our country and beyond that to the democracy
of Athens, Greece. One of the most significant works of philosophy written at
the height of the civilization of Greece is Plato’s Republic. About 40 years ago I worked daily in the Newberry Library
on my dissertation for my PhD at Loyola on Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia.
I used Paul Shorey’s translation of the Republic
in the Loeb Classical edition as my source, and I used Edward Surtz’s
translation of the Utopia. Father
Surtz, a Jesuit priest, who taught at Loyola was the editor of the Yale edition
of the Utopia, and he was my thesis
advisor.
It
has only been in recent years that I realized that when Paul Shorey was
translating the Republic, he was a
member of the Chicago Literary Club and a member of the classics department at
the University of Chicago. He was
born in Davenport, Iowa in 1857
and died in Chicago in 1934.
After graduating from Harvard in 1878 he studied in Europe at Leipzig, Bonn,
Athens, and Munich, where he received his Ph.D. in 1884. He was a professor at
several institutions from 1885 onward, principally at the University of
Chicago. He was a member of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters and managing editor of Classical Philology. He published
numerous books and articles, among them The
Idea of Good in Plato's Republic and The
Unity of Plato's Thought in addition to Horace's Odes. After his death, one of many
articles published about him asserted that he knew all 12,000 lines of Homer’s Iliad
by heart. As a member of the Literary Club for almost 40 years until his death
in 1934, he presented 22 papers on a variety of subjects in the humanities,
especially Plato’s works. I would have been proud to have studied with
Professor Shorey, as I was to study with Father Surtz, but I was only three
years old when professor Shorey died. I
present this paper in homage to Paul Shorey and Edward Surtz in recognition of
their devotion to the humanities, to Plato and to Thomas More.
In my paper I hope to connect one of the enduring metaphors of western literature to George Orwell’s 1984. In the fading days of the Greek democracy in 399 BC, the council of Athens tried Socrates and condemned him to death for crimes against the state. Plato recorded this trial in his Apology. It was reading The Apology that sparked my interest in literature and in the humanities. Later as my reading interest widened, I came to understand Alfred North Whitehead’s comment that "all Western Civilization is a footnote to Plato."
Poets and
philosophers have imbibed ideas and images from Plato's works from his time to
our own. Even if you have not read the Republic,
you may be familiar with the
"Parable of the Cave." It has been a template for innumerable
poets and philosophers to imagine their own conceptions of an ideal state. Socrates relates it to give a concrete
example of why the philosopher/king must know the form of the good in order to
rule the state justly. He explains the
origin and nature of an ideal state--a picture of order and harmony with three
classes: rulers, guardians, and workers, each performing his or her own
function. His student Glaucon admits that such a state would be desirable but
asks how it could ever come into existence. Only if philosophers become kings
Socrates answers. The philosopher can know justice only if he comprehends the
form of the good. Socrates admits that
he cannot define "the good" precisely, but it is that which every
person strives for; the source of the knowledge of justice, truth and beauty.
Because
these abstractions bewilder Glaucon, Socrates tells the parable. Imagine prisoners chained deep inside a cave
with their arms, legs and heads immovable so that they gaze fixedly on a wall.
Behind the prisoners an enormous fire projects images of shadows of plants and
animals on the wall in the front of the cave. On a road behind the cave, people
are walking and talking. The prisoners believe that the shadows are talking,
and they engage in what appears to be a game, naming the shapes as they pass
by. They judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the
shapes. Suppose a prisoner breaks his chains and climbs out of the cave. The sun would instantly blind him. After his
eyes become accustomed to the light he will realize that the shadows on the
wall differ from the objects being projected from the rear of the cave. In
time, he would learn to see the sun as the object that provides the seasons of
the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way
the cause of all these things. As I will presently explain, this is the
condition of Winston Smith, the hero in George Orwell’s 1984.
Socrates
continues with the parable. Once enlightened, the freed prisoner would not want
to return to his chains, but he would be compelled to do so. Returning into the
cave would require him once again to adjust his eyes to identify shapes on the
wall. His eyes would be disoriented by the darkness, and he would take time to
become acclimated. He might stumble, Socrates explains, and the prisoners would
conclude that his experience had ruined him. He would not be able to identify
the shapes as well as the other prisoners. It would seem to them that being
taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight.
So what is the significance of the parable? I suggest three: First the philosopher who grasps the true forms of good, truth, justice, and freedom knows best how to rule the state, but he is, paradoxically, least willing to rule it himself. Secondly, the philosopher who tells truth will meet with disbelief, ridicule, rejection, persecution, and even death. Thirdly, a state can only be just if the leader is committed to the pursuit of an ideal above the state itself, such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It
is remarkable how often this parable recurs in works of literature and how
often the lives of heroic individuals throughout history imitate the parable.
Socrates himself is the most obvious example. In the Apology Plato dramatizes how the Senate of Athens indicts and
condemns Socrates to death for teaching falsehoods. The trial of Socrates
imitates the metaphor of the parable. His enemies, in effect, accuse Socrates
of seeing shadows instead of truth. Ironically one of them charges him with the
crime of teaching that the sun and the moon are stones and not gods.
I could
cite other works influenced by Plato’s Republic
and the parable. Cicero’s On the Republic, St. Augustine’s City
of God, Dante’s Divine Comedy to
name only the most famous in classical and medieval literature. In 1516, at the
beginning of the Renaissance, Thomas More, in his Utopia, consciously imitates the Republic. Like the Republic, the Utopia is presented in the form of a dialogue among friends after a religious service. King Henry
VIII of England had sent Thomas More on a diplomatic mission to Flanders to
negotiate a trade agreement with Prince Charles of Castile. In Antwerp, after
Mass, he meets an old friend, Peter Giles in front of the Cathedral. There they
meet Raphael Hythlodaeus, a Portuguese sea captain, who has recently returned
from his fourth voyage with Amerigo Vespucci to the New World. The three men
retire to Peter Giles’ garden where they engage in a discussion about justice
and politics.
The
narrative in the Republic also occurs
after a religious service. Socrates and Glaucon are returning from
paying their devotions to the goddess when they meet Polemarchus and his
friends. They retire to the garden of Cephulus, the father of Polemarchus,
where they spend the afternoon discussing the origin and nature of
justice. Socrates has much in common
with the ship captain. Raphael is no
ordinary ship captain. "For his
sailing," as Peter Giles explains, "has not been like that of
Palinaurus but that of Ulysses, or rather of Plato." As the dialogue
progresses, we learn that Raphael is a self-taught philosopher who has returned
to Europe after five years in the new world where he purports to have visited
the island of Utopia. On his voyage with Vespucci he takes with him a virtual
library of classical works, most notably the works of Plato. Before Raphael can
describe Utopia, however, Thomas More and Peter Giles, urge Raphael to offer
his services to a king as a councilor. But Raphael persistently resists their
arguments. In the middle of their debate
Thomas More appeals to the philosopher's sense of duty by citing the famous
passage from the Republic. "Your
favorite author, Plato, says that commonwealths will be happy only if either
philosophers become kings or kings turn to philosophy. “There is no hope if philosophers will not
impart their consul to kings." Raphael responds with his own citation of
Plato. He says, "But doubtless, Plato was right in foreseeing that if kings
themselves did not turn to philosophy, they would never approve of the advice
of real philosophers." That both men quote Plato to support opposing
arguments reveals that neither will accept the full implications of Socrates'
parable. Raphael, in refusing to enter
into European politics, reflects the natural inclination of a philosopher who
has ascended from the cave; that is, those who are most qualified to rule are
most reluctant.
Virtually
every character Raphael meets on his return from Utopia demonstrates the second concept inherent in Socrates' parable--that
the philosopher who returns to the cave will be met with skepticism and
disbelief. Raphael argues that corrupt councilors in all the courts of 16th
century Europe pervert justice, but his argument falls on deaf ears. Thomas
More and Peter Giles, respond like men in the cave. After Raphael has
graphically illustrated the sorry conditions of European politics, Peter Giles
fatuously responds, "You can’t convince me that a better ordered people
can be found in that new world than the one we have here.” But Raphael is
undaunted; he proceeds to tell about the island of Utopia, where justice reigns
supreme. At the end of their
conversation Raphael gives an impassioned peroration on the contrast between
the injustice in Europe and the justice in Utopia. But Thomas More also
responds with skepticism, "I cannot agree with all that he said. But I admit that many features in the Utopian
commonwealth would be good, but they could hardly be realized." In the text
of the Utopia, Thomas More cites
Plato more frequently than any other source except the Scriptures.
The title
of my paper is “Life Imitates Art.” This
title is a conscious inversion of the classic definition of poetry as an art of imitation.” As Socrates’ own life imitates the parable of the cave, so
too does Thomas More’s life imitate the fiction of his Utopia. The debate between Raphael, the philosopher, and the
fictional character, Thomas More, is an ironic imitation of the internal debate
Thomas More was having with himself at that time about whether to become a
councilor to King Henry VIII.
More
wrote the Utopia in two time frames,
which divide the work into Book I and Book II. He began writing the second book
before he completed the first, during a recess in the diplomatic negotiations
he had undertaken on behalf of the King.
When he returned to England, Cardinal Wolsey, King Henry's Lord
Chancellor, pressed him to enter the king's service as a councilor before he
had finished the first book. In the narrative the debate remains unresolved, but
undoubtedly the irresolution reflects the author More's own indecision.
Although he personally inclined to follow a way of life that would allow him
more time with his family and for study and contemplation, he relented to the
pressures of Cardinal Wolsey and entered the service of King Henry.
For
the next 15 years More advanced as one of Henry’s most trusted councilors,
eventually becoming Lord Chancellor, the highest post ever held by a commoner.
Those were turbulent years in the lives of Thomas More and King Henry, and in
the whole of politics of Europe. In 1521 Pope Leo X proclaimed King Henry
“Defender of the Faith” for his treatise in defense of the papacy against the
attacks of Martin Luther. "Defender of the Faith" has been one
of the subsidiary titles of the English monarchs ever since. The Pope conferred the title in recognition
of Henry's book, In Defense of the Seven
Sacraments, which was seen as an important opposition to the early stages
of the Protestant
Reformation, especially the ideas of Martin Luther. Ironically
Thomas More probably wrote this treatise.
More became involved with the politics of Henry’s attempt to
defend the papacy against the attacks of Luther. But then in 1530 he found
himself between a rock and a hard place. Henry had a prolonged dispute with
Pope Clement VII over his attempt to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine
after 20 years of marriage. Catherine had failed to produce a male heir to the
throne, and Henry wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. Henry decided to break with Rome
in 1530 and establish himself
as head of the Church of
England, for which he was excommunicated. More’s
divided loyalties to the King of England and to the Pope came to a head in
1533. More had long been a loyal subject and friend of Queen Catherine, and he
refused to attend the coronation
of Anne Boleyn. After that
snub More was asked to appear before a commission and swear his allegiance to
the parliamentary Act of
Succession. He refused to take the oath because of an anti-papal
preface to the Act asserting Parliament's authority to legislate in matters of
religion by denying the authority of the Pope, which More would not accept. For
this refusal Henry ordered More beheaded.
More’s problems with Henry are much more complicated than I
have time to describe here, but they are brilliantly portrayed in Robert Bolt’s
play, “A Man for All Seasons,” made into the academy award winning movie with
Paul Schofield playing Thomas More and Orson Wells playing Cardinal Wolsey.
Robert Bolt was an agnostic with no allegiance to the Catholic Church or any
religion. His title reflects Bolt’s portrayal of More as the ultimate man of conscience. As one who
remains true to himself and his beliefs under all circumstances and at all
times, despite external pressure or influence. Bolt borrowed the title from Robert Whittington, a
contemporary of More, who wrote of him: "More is a man of an angel's wit
and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that
gentleness, lowliness and affability? a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes,
and sometime of sad gravity. A man for all seasons." Coincidentally I read
in the Theater and Arts section of yesterday’s New York Times a preview of a revival on Broadway of “The Man for
All Seasons,” which will open on Thursday. Patrick Page, the Shakespearean
actor who plays Henry VIII, is described as “an enthusiastic researcher, who
pored over biographies of Henry VIII and Thomas More for his current role. He
says “A Man for All Seasons” has something like Shakespearean scope, and Doug
Hughes, the director, called it “a meditation on the travesty of unchecked
executive power.” So Thomas More defied the most powerful monarch England had
ever known, and like Socrates, was executed for adhering to what he believed to
be a higher truth than that which Henry dictated.
The Utopia was the
progenitor of a new genre. Within 100 years utopian works in three languages
were published. All of these works reveal the influence of both The Republic and the Utopia. From the 17th through
the 19th century works of utopian literature proliferated and became
extremely popular, influencing political and social movements. The most famous
of these written in the United States was Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards, published in 1888. Erich Fromm, in his
forward to a modern edition, says it is "one of the most remarkable books
ever published in America." It was the third largest bestseller of its
time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur. In "Looking Backward"
Julian West, an upper class
man in Boston in 1887, awakens in the year 2000 from a hypnotic trance to find
himself in a socialist
utopia. Looking Backwards influenced a large
number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the
day. It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately
on its appearance a political mass movement.
Several Bellamy clubs sprang up all over the United States to discuss
and propagate the book’s ideas. It also inspired several utopian communities
that flourished in the 19th century. Likewise the Utopia had a profound influence on
Marxist ideology. Thomas More holds the unique distinction of being hailed as a
prophet in the former Soviet Union and canonized a saint in the Roman Catholic
Church.
The horrors of the 20th century, however, brought
about a reaction to the 19th century Marxist and socialist idea of
progress. The optimistic fantasies of utopian literature gave way to the
pessimistic view of dystopian literature. Huxley’s Brave New World, and Orwell’s 1984
became 20th century classics. The precursor of these works is a
Russian futuristic dystopian
satire, Zamiatin’s We, generally considered to be the grandfather of the genre. Orwell
began Nineteen Eighty-Four some eight months
after he read We in a French
translation and wrote a review of it.
Paradoxically the DNA of these dystopian novels, as well as
others such as William Golding’s Lord of
the Flies, can be discerned in Plato’s Republic.
In what time remains I will attempt to explain how Socrates’ “Parable of the
Cave” is a template for Orwell’s 1984.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Winston Smith, the hero of the
novel, is the epitome of Socrates’ man in the cave. The cave in the analogy is
the totalitarian society of Oceania where the action in the novel takes place.
Although Oceania, is a far different regime from that depicted, as the ideal
state in Plato’s Republic, the
story of Winston Smith’s struggle to free himself from the iron grip of Big
Brother is an ironic parody of Socrates’ parable. Orwell’s novel
has become such an icon in the 20th century that even those who do
not know the plot recognize the image of Big Brother as a symbol of the
ever-present control of the totalitarian state. The role of Big Brother is to
condition the members of the perverted society to believe that shadows are
reality. Ironically Big Brother does not actually exist but is a fabrication of
the Inner Party. The guiding slogans plastered on every available space in the
city, “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; and Ignorance is Strength,” epitomize
the perversion of the regime.
Like the ideal state described by Socrates,
with three classes of philosophers, guardians and workers, Oceania is divided
into three classes:--the Inner Party, the
Outer Party, and the Proles. In the republic the Philosopher attains the
highest level after a lifetime of a rigorous curriculum of gymnastics,
arithmetic, logic, rhetoric and dialectic. The educational system aims to imbue
the philosophers with a love and knowledge of truth, beauty, freedom and
justice. The result is that the Philosopher/King embodies the virtues of the
state he administers--wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Inner Party
members occupy the highest place in Oceania in roughly the same proportional
numbers, but how they attain this high perch is a mystery. The portrait of Big
Brother, with eyes contrived to be looking at the viewer, with the caption,
“Big Brother is Watching” adorns every public building as well as the hallways
of the decrepit tenement buildings where Outer Party members, like Winston
Smith, dwell in apartments. Ubiquitous telescreens in every public as well as
private space in the city reinforce this warning. The aim of the Inner Party is
not truth or justice but power.
The
first segment of the plot portrays the self-education of Winston’s attempt to
see and understand reality and escape from the cave. He is an outer
party member and works in the records department of the Ministry of Truth,
rewriting and altering records. This ministry is euphemistically labeled
Minitrue in the Newspeak dictionary, the official language of Oceania. It is so
named, to disguise its real function to distort truth. Similarly the names of
the other three controlling ministries are euphemistically abbreviated;
Minipax, conducts wars; Miniluv, enforces order with a policy of torture to
exact confessions from those accused of Thought Crimes; and Miniplenty,
rations consumer goods. Winston has
become bothered by his realization that his main function as a party hack is to
alter the historical record so that Big Brother can maintain complete control.
He comes home at midday for lunch for the express purpose of making an entry in
his diary, which he has purchased illegally in a Prole section of the city.
This act is a thought crime punishable by death.
The first two-sentence
paragraph hits the ironic keynote of the theme of the entire novel. “It was a bright cold day in
April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled
into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through
the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a
swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.” This image disorients the reader. Since Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and before, a cold bright windy day is not the
weather associated with the spring of the year in England. The clock striking
13 conveys an eerie feeling that something is out of kilter. The first name of
the hero evokes an association with Winston Churchill, but his last name,
Smith, is the most common surname in the English language. This is an
ironically appropriate name for the main character, an everyman, destroyed
after a heroic struggle with the forces of evil. It is pathetically ironic that
Winston should struggle to keep out the gritty dust from entering with him in
the tenement building with the grandiose name of Victory Mansions.
The Inner Party maintains control by the contrived device
of convincing the masses that the lies they encounter in every aspect of their
daily activities are true. The Inner Party’s manipulation of reality,
especially manipulation of language and propaganda through Newspeak, thwarts
Winston’s search for meaning in this world of shadows. "Newspeak" is
the new totalitarian language, which replaces "Old English." The aim
of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought so that an individual could not
even think critical or subversive thoughts. Potentially critical terms like
"freedom" are formally defined into their conceptual opposites
("freedom is slavery"), or are simply eliminated from the dictionary
and everyday language. In this manner, critical language would wither away as
the number of words, which allow differentiation and critique, was increasingly
reduced. "Doublethink" for Orwell was the mental activity of
simultaneously knowing and not knowing, denoting an ability to be conscious of
the truth while telling lies, so that one could hold two contradictory views at
once and manipulate language to meet the exigencies of the moment. Its control
is so absolute that Winston cannot even be sure of the present date. When he
sits down to make his first entry in his diary. “He dipped the pen into the ink
and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To
mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:
April 4th, 1984.
He sat back. A sense of complete
helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any
certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was
fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born
in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within
a year or two.”
As
he continues in his self-education, he has an epiphany and comes to realize
that freedom and truth are inextricably related. He writes in his diary,
“Freedom is the freedom to say that 2+2=4. If that is granted all else
follows.” But the irony is that while he believes that he is thinking and
acting freely, the Inner Party has him under surveillance. O’Brian, the Inner
Party member with most control, coerces Winston to love Big Brother with an
electric device to torture him to believe in slogans and fabrications that
distort reality, such as 2+2=5. Winston comes to realize that he is being
manipulated, but he cannot understand the motive of the Inner Party. O’Brian
explains that the object is not truth, justice and least of all freedom but
simply power. O’Brian convinces Winston to reject his old fashioned ideas by
indoctrinating him as a religious teacher might use a catechism. He asks
Winston if he now understands the motives of the Party for which he has been
searching. Winston answers: 'You are ruling over us for
our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to
govern themselves, and therefore --'
He started and almost cried
out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brian had pushed the lever of
the dial up to thirty-five.
'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!'
he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'
He pulled the lever back and continued:
'Now I will
tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely
for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are
interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness:
only power, pure power.”
1984 is a tragedy, structured like
Thomas More’s Utopia on the template
of Plato’s parable. That is, the hero, Winston Smith, is analogous to the man
in the cave who recognizes that the shadows on the wall are not reality.
Likewise Winston comes to recognize that Big Brother and the whole regime is a
fiction woven out of a tissue of lies. When he attempts to tell this truth to
his fellow human beings through the device of his diary he is reduced to a
bumbling alcoholic who loves Big Brother, a shadow on the wall.
My subject is too large to cover in forty minutes, but let
me conclude by suggesting that the sad moral of the fictional works I have
mentioned is that history has shown that Socrates, Antigone, Jesus, Thomas More,
Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King are only the most obvious who come to my
mind who were executed for speaking and acting on the truth. 1984 when it was published in 1949 made an immediate impact. At
the time its evocation of a fictional totalitarian state recalled the recently
defeated tyrants of Germany and Russia, Hitler and Stalin. It served as a
warning to those in the free world of what is at stake. It wasn’t too many
years after that during the tumultuous days of the 1960s, I was teaching a course
in utopian literature at Ohio University. My students and I did not have to
search beyond the daily newscasts to perceive how life in the 1960s imitated
George Orwell’s art in 1984.
During
the Vietnam war we imbibed examples of Doublethink as readily as the citizens
of Oceana imbibed the slogans, “War is Peace,” and “Freedom is Slavery.” The
destruction of villages was labeled a "pacification program," the
village refugees were called "ambient non-combat personnel," and the
concentration camps in which they were housed were termed "pacified
hamlets." Doublethink prevailed in the inflated body counts and deflated
estimates of enemy troop strength, and new forms of Newspeak appeared
frequently: bombing one's own troops was called "accidental deliverance of
ordinance equipment," while getting killed by one's own forces was
referred to as falling prey to "friendly fire." Unprovoked aggression
against an innocent village was named a "pre-emptive defensive
strike," while the invasion of Cambodia was an "incursion."
Periodically rigged elections allowed corrupt military dictatorships in Vietnam
to be labeled "democratic.” After the war Newspeak and Doublethink
proliferated to such an extent that in the symbolic year of 1984 the National
Council of Teachers of English provided Doublespeak awards to Pentagon
descriptions of peace as "permanent pre-hostility," for calling
combat "violence processing," and for referring to civilian
causalities in nuclear war as "collateral damage."
Since then, in my opinion, the lies and the perversion of
language have not abated. Never did I expect that our government would enact a
policy of torture to exact confessions from recalcitrant enemy combatants. This
is called extraordinary rendition. When I first read this description of how
prisoners at Guantanamo were being processed, I had to remind my self of the
definition of “rendition” by looking it up, and I was assured that my
understanding of the word was the one cited in the American Heritage
Dictionary. .Four definitions are cited:
1. The act of rendering. 2. An interpretation of a musical score or a
dramatic piece. 3. A performance of a musical or dramatic work, and 4. A
translation, often interpretive. But when I looked up the combination
“Extraordinary rendition,” it is defined as the extrajudicial transfer of
a person from one state to another, particularly with regard to the alleged
transfer of suspected terrorists to countries known to torture prisoners or to
employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture.
Now that sounds to me like the kind of redefining words that was the objective
of the Ministry of Truth.
When I used Orwell’s 1984 in my course in utopian literature,
I used Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” in my courses in
composition. It is the best commentary written in the 20th century
on English style that I know of. In it Orwell laments the low state of writing
in the political propaganda regularly published in the media. He says, “modern
writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of
their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It
consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set
in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer
humbug.” He is not very optimistic that
the state of English usage will improve without conscious effort by those who
should know better, and he advises them,
“Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and
get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.
Afterward one can choose — not simply accept
— the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and
decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This
last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated
phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can
often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules
that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will
cover most cases:
Never
use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing
in print.
Never
use a long word where a short one will do.
If
it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never
use the passive where you can use the active.
Never
use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of
an everyday English equivalent.
Break
any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
These rules sound elementary, and so
they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown
used to writing in the style now fashionable.”
In this frenzied election year we have only a month to go
to see how far the spin meisters and swift boaters can think up new ways to
make the worst appear the better cause, to convince us to mistake shadows for
reality. It remains the task of poets, philosophers and prophets to remind us
that the truth will make us free. As I grow older I become more convinced that
western civilization is a footnote to Plato.