Orwell's Anti-Fascists: Real Readers, Not Uncles

College Composition and Communication May 1986

Orwell's Anti-Fascists: Real Readers, Not Uncles

David Tedlock

Abstract

In the summer of 1936, George Orwell sat at his desk in his cottage in Wallington, Near Baldock, Herfordshire. with birds chattering or squabbling in the rafters overhead, he began to write an essay about shooting an elephant, an essay which would become remarkably popular. (See Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life [London: Secker and Warburg, 19801, p. 200.) Most remarkable of all, even for the author of 1984, Orwell foresaw with incredible clarity my 1980 freshman composition class: black, Chicago bornand-raised Paula Smith; Massey-Ferguson-seed-cap-wearing Dale Harvey; all A's, small-town (Sheldon) Kevin Youngers, and all the others. With at least my Iowans in mind Orwell wrote, And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a (Shooting an Elephant, in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus [New York: Harcourt, 19681, I, 239). Of course the notion that Orwell included a cow comparison for farm-oriented Dale and Kevin is absurd. But nearly all the editors of the composition textbooks we call readers imply that Orwell (and other authors) wrote specifically for college students or generally for anyone ever able to read English. Actually Orwell's concern about a specific audience began before my students were born. In a May 27, 1936 response to a query from Michael Lehmann, editor of New Writing, Orwell writes:

Journal: College Composition and Communication
Published: 1986-05-01
DOI: 10.2307/357519
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

Clausson (2011)

Clarity, George Orwell, and the Pedagogy of Prose Style; Or, How Not to Teach “…

Pedagogy

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