Happy birthday, George Orwell!
Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell (June 15,
1903-January 21, 1950), would have turned 111 today. He is of course best known
for his much-read and much-quoted masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, which depicts the bleak, anti-individualist dystopian
state of Big Brother and the Thought Police, and for Animal Farm, the farmyard allegory of communist collapse.
Like our last birthday boy, William Shakespeare, Orwell is
also responsible for the introduction of a variety of new vocabulary into English.
He is credited with coining “cold war,” “Big Brother,” “thought police,” and “Room
101,” among others.
Considering that much of his life was spent in poverty and
ill health, it is something of a miracle that in only forty-six years George
Orwell managed to publish ten books and two collections of essays.
Last year, celebrating Orwell’s 110th birthday,
Dutch artists Front404 drew attention to today’s Orwellian surveillance by
decorating CCTV cameras in Utrecht’s city center…with cheery party hats. The
stunt was a viral online success, but we’ve yet to hear if it’s been repeated
this year.
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