A Prophet for our Time
One hundred years ago next week Eric Blair, later and better known as George Orwell, was born.
Although most famous for his vivid and brutal dystopias, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell wrote on virtually every conceivable topic, from the Spanish Civil War to seaside picture postcards, from Charles Dickens to the common toad. Those enticed into his collected works by his late masterpieces often find themselves mesmerised by the breadth of his interests, his compelling prose style and the overriding sense that, despite dying over 50 years ago, he is still a prophet for our time.
His prophetic role is not to be seen in any crystal-ball gazing of the kind that prophets are popularly thought to specialise in. Orwell was no better at foretelling the future than many of his contemporaries and on occasion he was badly wrong. In one wartime essay he wrote: "We are passing into a new economic period - a period in which private enterprise will count for less and trade will mean more than an endless struggle to induce people to buy things they do not really want."
Instead, he was a prophet in the original, Israelite sense of the word. The Hebrew word for prophet derived from the verb 'to call' and this was reflected in the prophets' dual role: they were individuals called by God so that they may call for God, proclaiming his truth and summoning the nation to repent.
Orwell had next to no religious faith himself and once described the traditional Christian vision of heaven as "choir practice in a jeweller's shop". Yet, in the words of the critic John Carey, "his truth-telling had a religious intensity".
Like the Old Testament prophets he was willing to stand outside the mainstream in order to fight for truth. The dehumanisation of totalitarian regimes, the cruelties of imperialism, the hypocrisy of political posturing, the abuse of the English language, the destruction of the English landscape, the cruel oppression and crass idealisation of the poor - for each of these causes, so many of which are still being fought today, Orwell was willing to brave the indignation and even hatred of his contemporaries, refusing to bow to received wisdom.
Orwell was certainly no saint but the way in which he stood against the slippery orthodoxies of his age should serve as a beacon of hope to all who wish to do the same today.
Nick Spencer
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