Let’s know more about this Author; Eric Arthur Blair best known as George Orwell wrote on a wide range of topics. He is best remembered for two novels of political satire: Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell expressed his desire to become a writer at age five or six, he tried to abandon his idea between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four but later settled down to write books anyway.
Why I Write is an essay by George Orwell about his personal experiences in becoming a writer, a book in which he makes several generalizations about writing and writers overall.
The Four Motives of Writing
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in- at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own- but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting asides the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in the different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
Sheer egoism
Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen- in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all- and live chiefly for others, or are simply smoothed under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self–centered than Journalists, though less interested in money.
Aesthetic enthusiasm
Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non – utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
Historical impulse
Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
Political purpose
–Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time.
George Orwell Final Remark
Orwell offers a final remark on these motives which is to be taken with a grain of salt as well as gaining insights from the writer’s motivations.
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public- spirited. I don’t want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a POLITICAL purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
Have you ever thought of writing as a way of healing? Check out this article which enumerates four Authors who saw writing as a way of healing. Click here.
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