Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell, 1938

Résumé du document

At the end of 1936 George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair was his real name) went to Spain to fight fascism. He got involved with the POUM militia and went to the battlefront of Aragon. He wrote his book ?Homage to Catalonia' just six month after returning to England. He wanted to relate his vision of the civil war, and his participation and set the record straight about the Revolution and political dissension. This book tells us the experience of the author during the Spanish Civil War. Though it does not convey much literally, it makes us aware of the historic period and it helps us understand the progression of the author from 1984 and the ?animal farm'. When George Orwell arrived in Catalonia in December 1936, he his puepose was only to conduct coverage, but his leftist beliefs and the revolutionary atmosphere in Barcelona pushed him to be committed the cause of the working-class militia. We feel his disillusion with the communist party of USSR which impeded the Revolution in Spain instead of spreading it.

Extraits

[...] The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the Revolution was still in full swing. Orwell wants to restore the truth about the Revolution which was disclaimed by all the communist parties in the world and by the whole of journals and politics. Yet the Revolution had been completed, even if the communist conducted by USSR managed to broke it. So Orwell accounts for the social transformation in Catalonia. Every factories and building of any size had been seized by the workers. [...]

[...] Orwell often brings to mind that his vision can be biased by his feeling, however his testimony is clear: all socialist and communist newspapers in Europe tried to hide the social Revolution. Probably they ignored it, but what they described was completely wrong. Orwell managed to prove many mistakes and discrepancies in a lot of British articles. The time to the repression in Barcelona in 1937 May was the moment where he was the most in danger! Him and his wife were pursued because of their links with the POUM. [...]

[...] That's why he wrote: Revolutionary discipline depends on political consciousness on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square To my mind, I guess George Orwell has very appreciated his experience in the militia and in the Revolution. I think it is the more beautiful homage to Catalonia that we can do, particularly for all the people killed when the Nationalists conquered Catalonia in the first two month of 1939. [...]

[...] Orwell lays stress on the standing defensive position of the militia; the troops were always put on the backburner for an assault. That's the reason why Orwell deems he was not often jeopardized. Moreover the war leaded by the militia was technically poor, the POUM militia was bereft of a real hardware. There was a serious lack of weapons, and the only available were old and spoilt. In addition, George Orwell aims at showing the Spanish and Catalan specifics of its war. [...]

[...] Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell At the end of 1936 George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair was his real name) went to Spain to fight the fascism. He got involved into the POUM militia and he went to the battlefront of Aragon. He wrote his book Homage to Catalonia just six month after his coming back in England. He wanted to relate his vision of the civil war, his participation and set things right about the Revolution and the political dissensions. [...]