| “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” |
I love essays. Writing them. Reading them. “Essay” comes from the French essayer, meaning “to try” or “to attempt.” Some of my favorite essayists include:
THE ANCIENTS
- Marcus Tullius Cicero's On Duties, and On Old Age
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca's Letters from a Stoic
- Gaius Musonius Rufus' That Man is Born with an Inclination Toward Virtue, That Women Too Should Study Philosophy, That Exile is not an Evil, What means of Livelihood is Appropriate for a Philosopher?, What is the Chief End of Marriage, Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy? Must One Obey One's Parents under all Circumstances?, and On Furnishings.
THE RENAISSANCE
- Michel de Montaigne: The complete works, especially On the Power of Imagination
- Francis Bacon: The complete collection, especially Of Youth and Age.
THE MODERNS
- Ayn Rand: Philosophy: Who Needs It, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, The Virtue of Selfishness, and The Return of the Primitive.
- Michael Crichton: Travels and Aliens Cause Global Warming
- George Orwell: Nearly everything.
CONTEMPORARY
- Evan Pushak of the 'Nerdwriter' YouTube channel, especially Westworld: What Makes Anthony Hopkins Great
- Megha Lillywhite's Substack in it's entirety.
- Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and all of these.
George Orwell’s short nonfiction—largely autobiographical—forms a coherent investigation into power: how it is exercised, internalized, justified, and resisted. Across essays written in the 1930s and 1940s, Orwell returns to the same pressure points: imperial authority, institutional cruelty, linguistic decay, childhood fear, and the quiet moral relief offered by nature.
Taken together, this collection of six essays form a constellation of themes that are just as relevant nearly 100 years later: power coerces; institutions harden us humans; and language decays under dishonesty. Yet clarity, sympathy, nature, and plain speech remain available for us to reclaim our dignity. Orwell does not present solutions so much as habits: attention, precision, and moral refusal. His nonfiction endures due to its terse, unvarnished honesty.
THE ANCIENTS
- Marcus Tullius Cicero's On Duties, and On Old Age
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca's Letters from a Stoic
- Gaius Musonius Rufus' That Man is Born with an Inclination Toward Virtue, That Women Too Should Study Philosophy, That Exile is not an Evil, What means of Livelihood is Appropriate for a Philosopher?, What is the Chief End of Marriage, Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy? Must One Obey One's Parents under all Circumstances?, and On Furnishings.
THE RENAISSANCE
- Michel de Montaigne: The complete works, especially On the Power of Imagination
- Francis Bacon: The complete collection, especially Of Youth and Age.
THE MODERNS
- Ayn Rand: Philosophy: Who Needs It, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, The Virtue of Selfishness, and The Return of the Primitive.
- Michael Crichton: Travels and Aliens Cause Global Warming
- George Orwell: Nearly everything.
CONTEMPORARY
- Evan Pushak of the 'Nerdwriter' YouTube channel, especially Westworld: What Makes Anthony Hopkins Great
- Megha Lillywhite's Substack in it's entirety.
- Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and all of these.
George Orwell’s short nonfiction—largely autobiographical—forms a coherent investigation into power: how it is exercised, internalized, justified, and resisted. Across essays written in the 1930s and 1940s, Orwell returns to the same pressure points: imperial authority, institutional cruelty, linguistic decay, childhood fear, and the quiet moral relief offered by nature.
Taken together, this collection of six essays form a constellation of themes that are just as relevant nearly 100 years later: power coerces; institutions harden us humans; and language decays under dishonesty. Yet clarity, sympathy, nature, and plain speech remain available for us to reclaim our dignity. Orwell does not present solutions so much as habits: attention, precision, and moral refusal. His nonfiction endures due to its terse, unvarnished honesty.
| “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.” |
— Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell
IMPERIALISM AND MORAL CORRUPTION
In Shooting an Elephant (1936), Orwell reflects on his time as a police officer in British-ruled Lower Burma. Though he personally opposed imperialism, he found himself enforcing it daily, surrounded by hostility from the local population. The essay centers on a single incident: a rogue elephant that had escaped its chain, caused destruction in a bazaar, and killed a man.
Legally justified in killing the elephant, Orwell nevertheless hesitates. Surrounded by roughly two thousand Burmese onlookers, he realizes that his authority depends not on law or judgment, but on performance. He ultimately shoots the elephant not because he believes it necessary, but because he fears being laughed at. The animal takes over an hour to die, with Orwell emptying shot after shot into its neck, chest, and mouth.
The essay’s core argument is not about cruelty to animals, but about imperial power as a trap that deforms both ruler and ruled. Orwell describes imperialism as a system in which “when [man] turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” The act of killing the elephant becomes symbolic: an outward assertion of control that coincides with inner collapse.
Legally justified in killing the elephant, Orwell nevertheless hesitates. Surrounded by roughly two thousand Burmese onlookers, he realizes that his authority depends not on law or judgment, but on performance. He ultimately shoots the elephant not because he believes it necessary, but because he fears being laughed at. The animal takes over an hour to die, with Orwell emptying shot after shot into its neck, chest, and mouth.
The essay’s core argument is not about cruelty to animals, but about imperial power as a trap that deforms both ruler and ruled. Orwell describes imperialism as a system in which “when [man] turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” The act of killing the elephant becomes symbolic: an outward assertion of control that coincides with inner collapse.
“I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deep grief, which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world, but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was not actually possible for me to keep them.”
INSTITUTIONS DEGRADE
In The Spike, Orwell recounts a military exercise in which he and other soldiers are sent to survive briefly as tramps. The experiment exposes the thin line between respectability and destitution. Hunger, exhaustion, humiliation, and petty authority define the experience. The essay ends quietly, with one soldier giving Orwell cigarette butts in gratitude—a small gesture underscoring how deprivation rearranges values.
Such, Such Were the Joys turns to Orwell’s childhood at St. Cyprian’s boarding school. Beginning at age eight, he endured corporal punishment, public humiliation, favoritism toward wealthy students, and a moral atmosphere structured by fear. He recalls being beaten for bed-wetting and forced to proclaim his guilt aloud, learning early that it was possible “to commit a sin without knowing you committed it.”
Orwell describes childhood as a period of acute vulnerability, where rules are absolute but impossible to follow, and adults appear omnipotent. “School is run by fear; home is run by love,” he writes, drawing a sharp line between institutional authority and genuine care.
Such, Such Were the Joys turns to Orwell’s childhood at St. Cyprian’s boarding school. Beginning at age eight, he endured corporal punishment, public humiliation, favoritism toward wealthy students, and a moral atmosphere structured by fear. He recalls being beaten for bed-wetting and forced to proclaim his guilt aloud, learning early that it was possible “to commit a sin without knowing you committed it.”
Orwell describes childhood as a period of acute vulnerability, where rules are absolute but impossible to follow, and adults appear omnipotent. “School is run by fear; home is run by love,” he writes, drawing a sharp line between institutional authority and genuine care.
| “The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.” |
— Politics and the English Language, George Orwell
WRITING, POLITICS, AND LANGUAGE
In Why I Write, Orwell outlines four motives behind writing: egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, political purpose, and historical impulse. He argues that political awareness does not corrupt art, but clarifies it: “The more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetics and intellectual integrity.”
This concern deepens in Politics and the English Language, where Orwell diagnoses modern prose as evasive and insincere. He critiques dying metaphors, pretentious diction, vague abstractions, and euphemisms that conceal responsibility. Political language, he argues, is designed “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
For Orwell, unclear language is not merely bad style—it is a moral failure. When writers avoid concreteness, they avoid accountability.
This concern deepens in Politics and the English Language, where Orwell diagnoses modern prose as evasive and insincere. He critiques dying metaphors, pretentious diction, vague abstractions, and euphemisms that conceal responsibility. Political language, he argues, is designed “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
For Orwell, unclear language is not merely bad style—it is a moral failure. When writers avoid concreteness, they avoid accountability.
“School is run by fear; home is run by love.”
— Such, Such Were the Joys, George Orwell
NATURE, FOOD, AND MORAL BREATHING SPACE
Against systems of domination and distortion, Orwell repeatedly turns to ordinary, daily pleasures. In Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, he celebrates seasonal change and small encounters with nature as experiences untouched by propaganda or bureaucracy. “Before the swallow, before the daffodil, and not much later than the snowdrop, the common toad salutes the coming of spring,” he writes. Nature is a place of beauty, solace, and help's give life meaning.
Similarly, In Defense of English Cooking praises everyday foods—bread, puddings, apples, sausages—found not in restaurants, but in homes. These essays suggest that while institutions corrupt, ordinary life retains pockets of sanity, continuity, and quiet joy. Restaurants in England at the time catered to foreign cuisines, but the soul of English cooking was quietly baked, sautéed, and served in real kitchens by real English folk. [JG]
Similarly, In Defense of English Cooking praises everyday foods—bread, puddings, apples, sausages—found not in restaurants, but in homes. These essays suggest that while institutions corrupt, ordinary life retains pockets of sanity, continuity, and quiet joy. Restaurants in England at the time catered to foreign cuisines, but the soul of English cooking was quietly baked, sautéed, and served in real kitchens by real English folk. [JG]
“Few faces are best when seen from below.”
— Such, Such Were the Joys, George Orwell
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