George Orwell 2

Raul Gamarra
English 1B

Mr. Russell

09 March, 2010

George Orwell

            George Orwell initially born as Eric Blair was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, in the then British colony of India, where his father, Richard, worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service. His mother, Ida, brought him to England at the age of one. He did not see his father again until 1907, when Richard visited England for three months before leaving again until 1912. Eric had an older sister named Marjorie and a younger sister named Avril. With his characteristic humor, he would later describe his family's background as "lower-upper-middle class." This biography will describe Orwell’s Education, Burma and afterwards, Spanish civil war, World war and after all supported by some of Orwell’s essays.
          At the age of five, Orwell was sent to a small Anglican parish school in Henley which his sister had attended before him. He never wrote of his recollections of it, but he must have impressed the teachers very favorably for two years later he was recommended to the headmaster of one of the most successful preparatory schools in England at the time: St Cyprian's School, in Eastbourne, Sussex. Young Orwell attended St Cyprian's on a scholarship that allowed his parents to pay only half of the usual fees. Many years later, he would recall his time at St Cyprian's with biting resentment in the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys," describes his time there as a "world of force and fraud and secrecy," in which the young Orwell, a shy, sickly and unattractive boy surrounded by pupils from families much richer than his own, was "like a goldfish" thrown "into a tank full of pike."   But he did well enough to earn scholarships to both Wellington and Eton colleges. The education he received was "a preparation for a sort of confidence trick," geared entirely towards maximizing his future performance in the admissions exams to those big colleges.
          After finishing his...