George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903, in eastern India. Orwell was born to parents who were members of the Indian Civil Service. Orwell had a sister about five years old than he, and another five years younger, but he was never very close to them.
In 1911, at a very early age, Orwell was sent back to England to begin his education. Orwell graduated from Eton at age eighteen, and rather unexpectedly, was to spend the next five years (1922-27) in Burma as an officer of the Indian Imperial Police, an experience that later found expression in the novel Burmese Days (1934). His first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), was a nonfictional moving and comical account of several years of self-imposed poverty he had experienced after leaving Burma. He published three other novels in the 1930s; Homage to Catalonia (1938) recounts his experiences fighting for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was wounded, and, when the Communists attempted to eliminate their allies on the far left, fought against them and was forced to flee for his life.
In 1945, Orwell's wife died as the result of a minor operation. He attributed her death to lowered physical resistance due to the war; both she and Orwell had consistently given up a part of their wartime food rations to feed children, and consequently had impaired their health. In 1949 he married Sonia Brownell, who assisted him in taking care of his adopted son.
Orwell's two best-known books reflect his lifelong distrust of autocratic government, whether of the left or right: Animal Farm (1945), a moder beast-fable attacking Stalinism, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a dystopian novel setting forth his fears of an intrusively bureaucratized state of the future. The pair of novels brought him his first fame and almost his only remuneration as a writer.
On January 21, 1950, as he was about to leave for a sanitarium in Switzerland, he had a tubercular hemmorhage and died in London, England.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was born in Harlem, which he described as "a southern community displaced in the streets of New York". He was the illegitimate son of Emma Berdis Jones; Jones later married David Baldwin when James was three. James' stepfather was an embittered, authoritarian lay preacher who preached the Old Testament doctrine of sinners in the hands of an angry God. To escape David Baldwin's hatred and harshness towards him, James escaped through reading. By age thirteen, James Baldwin claimed, he had read all the books in the two Harlem libraries; he thus moved over to the New York Public Library to continue his studies, and his escape.
Baldwin actually began his literary career at age twelve by publishing a short story in the church newspaper about the Spanish Civil War. He published his first book review at age twenty-two. Baldwin's career was officially launched after publishing The Harlem Ghetto, a controversial essay on black Anti-Semitism. Though he left the Church and renounced Christianity, its (and his stepfather's) influences ultimately shaped his writing. His rhetoric, sermonic, moralistic, rhythmical, and spirtual, ultimately earned him the title of a "latter-day Jeremiah". Baldwin's experiences with racism and with homophobia prompted him to move to Paris in 1948. However, after seeing a photograph of Dorothy Counts being spat upon as she attempted to desegregate a North Carolina school, he returned to the United States in 1957 and joined the Civil Rights Movement.
Baldwin was a national figure in the Movement; his social commentaries were widely published. (These writings were published in Nobody Knows My Name and Fire Next Time) After his involvement with the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin returned to Europe and lived there until his death on November 30 1987. Several weeks before his death, in an interview Baldwin stated, " No true account really of black life can be held, or contained, by the American vocabulary. As it is, the only way that you can deal with it is by doing great violence to the assumptions on which the vocabulary is based. What I tried to do, or to interpret and make clear, was that no society can smash the social contract and be exempt for the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in the society".
Read Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, and Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son
You've read two outstanding personal experience essays by James Baldwin and George Orwell. Both writers probe their lives to gain insight into their decisions, thoughts, motivations, and emotions.
Having read both essays, you must now identify common ideas and themes in their writing. To receive credit for assignment #2, you must post to the listserv (sheftman@onelist.com) at least 15 complete and grammatical sentences in response to the following:
Describe one important similarity between the experience Orwell underwent during his time in Burma and the experience Baldwin underwent as a resident of Harlem, New York/Trenton New Jersey. To support your ideas, refer to specific passages in their essays.
Provide a focused topic sentence which defines the similarity you have found. Then present evidence from the texts to explain why that similarity exists.
View an example of a response which earns credit for Credit Assignment #2
A stage model is an attempt to account for changes in human development through close observation and detailed description/analysis. Stage models are created within every academic discipline, and represent an essential tool in developing critical theories and substantiating them through evidence. You'll be drafting a stage model which will help you uncover the similarities in the experiences of George Orwell and James Baldwin. In preparation, study the stage models below. All stage models have the following components: a hierarchical order (stages proceed in a developmental sequence from lower to higher order stages), specific names for each stage, specific descriptions of the qualities which define each stage, a catalyst (the factors which help determine the progression from one stage to another). In creating your model, aim for economy (no superfluous stages) and power (a model which explains the phenomenon under study).
View a stage model for culture shock by Brink and Saunders
View a stage model for intellectual development by Bloom
View a stage model for moral development by Kohlberg
View Mr. Sheftman's stage model for the Orwell/Baldwin assignment
You have read two personal experience essays from George Orwell and James Baldwin, and written about a similarity the two men share. Your task for essay #2 is to present a psychological stage model which helps your readers understand the intellectual and emotional changes these writers underwent as a result of their experiences. You want your stage model to have explanatory power, to reveal the journey of self-discovery and insight which they travelled. In a three to four page, double spaced, essay, present your stage model, applying it to the readings we've discussed. Explain each stage's characteristics and use evidence from the Orwell and Baldwin essays to illustrate how and why Orwell and Baldwin moved from one stage to another, and the significance of that progression for themselves and their readers (the insights they learned and share with us).
Some points to consider: To write a successful essay, you should keep several key assumptions in mind. We accept as fact that Orwell and Baldwin went through changes as a result of their experiences. Your job is to figure out how the authors are different from the beginning of their stories (narrative) to the end, why those changes in thought/emotion came about, and what significance they have. Consider yourselves to be researchers of their psyche and environment. Turn a critical eye to what they reveal about key events in their lives and how they reacted. Notice how their perspectives are shaped by the ways they interpret the pressures upon them both within themselves (their expectations, desires, goals, etc.) and from outside (their society, the expectations of others).
Assume as well that your readers are unfamiliar with Baldwin and Orwell's essays. Your stage model acts as the tool for helping educate your readers about what these writers came to understand about their lives, how they gained that understanding, and why their insights are important. Study the samples of well written essays to get a clearer picture of the agenda you must pursue for essay #2.
View a sample "A" paper from a former 1A student
View a sample "B" paper from a former 1A student
View a sample "C" paper from a former 1A student
View a sample "D" paper from a former 1A student
View Model Student Essays from Winter 1999