George Orwell Response

In his writing, George Orwell seems to be extremely irritated with the way the English language has been used recently.  Orwell expresses his concern with the English language, especially in politics, by giving examples of typical mistakes made.  One mistake I can easily relate to is one’s failure to translate or paraphrase ideas while still keeping the same meaning.  He demonstrates this by translating a passage from Ecclesiastes into “modern english” from “good english”.  This example of paraphrasing by Orwell shows that if a writer does not take the time to examine the original writing thoroughly, then “concrete illustrations [...] can dissolve into vague phrases”.  For most writers it may be difficult to fully illustrate an idea in their own words.  Writers have to face challenges when it comes to conveying an idea: do not use meaningless or empty words, do not use too few words (missing the whole idea all together) or do not shape the idea to fit your own meaning.  Orwell wants us to get pass using hollow words or complex phrasing that can lead us to become “human machines”.  In everyday conversations we can point out some the typical metaphors or phrases that Orwell lists.  How many of the individuals involved in these conversations know the true meaning of the these metaphors or understand the wordy phrases?  The purpose of Orwell’s essay is to offer suggestions to turn from the laziness of the English language; Orwell’s desire is for writers to flee from vague meaningless writing.

While reading Orwell’s response I found myself comparing much of what he used as negative examples to what I do as a writer.  As I’m sure many writers do, I fall into the ease of replacing words with something that does not quite fulfill an image.  As Orwell pointed out, “the writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not”.  I do this all the time in my writing.  I regularly use a thesaurus while writing, and though sometimes this can be very useful, it also tempts me to use words that may not have the meaning to what I am trying to state.  For my argument paper I hope to meditate on Orwell’s writing to avoiding falling into the cycle of lazy writing.