Analysis Of George Orwell's Homage To Catalonia

1420 Words6 Pages
In 1936, George Orwell, an Indian/British author, finds himself in Spain, originally going to report the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, but getting caught up in the confusion of political parties and ideologies. Throughout the book, Orwell makes it clear that the only thing he is trying to get the reader to come across with is the truth of what happened and in which conditions. By looking at this historical event through the eyes of Orwell, new points of view are presented, such as: the fact that the war was fought essentially by three sides, rather than two homogenous sides, and the international dimension of the war (the non-intervention policy Britain and France had, as well as the involvement of the U.S.S.R. and Germany in the supply…show more content…
The fact that this is a primary source but “He used no political jargon (…) made no recriminations (…) made no effort to show that his heart was in the right place, or the left place and he was interested only in telling the truth.” (Trilling xxiii) makes this reliable even if it is in fact one man’s point of view. Arriving in Spain with connections from the I.L.P., joining the P.O.U.M., and looking to document the war, Orwell states that “It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan,” (Orwell 230). The British author couldn’t help but join the fighting, not for fun, or for curiosity, but because his ideals sympathized with those of the Spaniards. There were other authors including Hemingway, and Dos Passos (and his translator Jose Robles), whom approached Spain. All three of them had originally landed in Spain for curiosity, to see how a social revolution was being brought up while a civil war was occurring.. The authors fought in the front lines, as well as submerged themselves in ideologies, critiquing and agreeing to different ones. Some were in it for the experience, but others really felt the need of fighting with these people. When Dos Passos’ translator and friend, Jose Robles, was killed…show more content…
On page 47 of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell says: “as militiamen one was a soldier against Franco, but one was also a pawn in an enormous struggle being fought out between two political theories.” This war can be seen as a proxy war between Hitler and Mussolini against Stalin, between the nationalists and the republicans, the fascist and the communists. Both France and Great Britain decided to declare the policy of non-intervention (Moruno 41). They did this in order to prevent a Second World War from starting, which is reasonable, but because of this, the Spanish Government didn’t really have a choice than to fight with what it had, unorganized children with few weapons. Both fascist Germany and Italy did not respect the agreement, supplying Franco and his revolution with military support and munitions. Since no one “except Russia and Mexico (…) had the decency to come to the rescue of the Government,” (Orwell 53) the Republicans had the need to reach out the U.S.S.R. and purchase weapons from them. This caused a huge “ideological turn in the development of warfare,” (Moruno 41) which made the Communist Party a Stalinist one, causing rivalries between parties (like the P.O.U.M. versus the Communist Party) to be larger than the fights with the fascists. It also put the Russians in a position where they could dictate terms, and cut the supplies as
Open Document