George Orwell, Doubleness, and the Value of Decency

by Stewart,Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780415968713
• ISBN10: 0415968712
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-07-29
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In its analysis ofAnimal Farm,Burmese Days,Keep the Aspidistra FlyingandNineteen Eighty-Four, this book argues that George Orwell's fiction and non-fiction weigh the benefits and costs of adopting a doubled perspective - in other words, seeing one's own interests in relation to those of others - and illustrate how decency follows from such a perspective. Establishing this relationship within Orwell's work, Anthony Stewart demonstrates how Orwell's characters' ability to treat others decently depends upon the characters' relative capacities for doubleness.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
Chapter One: On Decency, Doubleness, and Updating Orwell	1	(42)
Learning to Write about Orwell	1	(10)
Orwell's Double Consciousness	11	(10)
Orwell and Race	21	(7)
Orwell as "Elastic-Brow"	28	(5)
Orwell's Critical Sense	33	(4)
Decency versus Hypocrisy in Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four	37	(6)
Chapter Two: Hardly Above Suspicion: Hypocrisy, Decency, and Sincerity in Burmese Days	43	(26)
Flory as Ideal Candidate	45	(4)
Hypocrisy Exposed	49	(9)
Dr. Veraswami-Decency Personified	58	(4)
Ellis and the Code of the Pukka Sahib	62	(4)
Variations on a Theme	66	(3)
Chapter Three: The Secret Art of Not Making Good: Gordon Comstock's Childish Narrowness in Keep the Aspidistra Flying	69	(24)
Gordon Comstock-The Triumph of Pettiness over Doubleness	71	(11)
The Decency of Rosemary Waterlow and the Role of Gender	82	(6)
Ravelston-Gordon's Partner in Delusion	88	(3)
Decency and Some Conclusions for the Individual	91	(2)
Chapter Four: An Absence of Pampering: The Betrayal of the Rebellion and the End of Decency in Animal Farm	93	(30)
From 1935 to Nineteen Eighty-Four: Concerns for the Part Become Concerns for the Whole	93	(6)
The Rebellion-The Beginning of the End of Decency	99	(9)
Consolidating Power and Enforcing the Rules of Indecency	108	(3)
Boxer and Decency's Final Demise	111	(4)
Decency and Justice-Is Behaving Decently a Mark of Weakness?	115	(8)
Chapter Five: The Heresy of Common Sense: The Prohibition of Decency in Nineteen Eighty-Four	123	(30)
Winston Smith and the Desire for Decency	127	(9)
Julia and the Citizens of Oceania	136	(4)
O'Brien-Imposing the Party's Final Vocabulary	140	(8)
Optimism ... After a Fashion	148	(5)
Conclusion: Decency or Tolerance?	153	(8)
Decency as Concrete Utopia	158	(3)
Notes	161	(24)
Bibliography	185	(8)
Index	193