Orwell's sense of humour.

With how generally depressing the majority of Orwell's books are, I am interested in the small moments where his dry wittiness pokes its head into his novels.

I found this in a book called: George Orwell: The Lost Writings. It is an interesting concept broadcasted in his BBC days. It is a magazine called 'Voice' but it is spoken over the air as to avoid being "a wasteful form of entertainment"

Here are some various quotes:

"One advantage of a magazine of this kind is that you can choose your own cover design. I should favour something in light blue or a nice light grey, but you can take your choice. Now turn to the first page. It's good quality paper, you notice, pre-war paper - you don't see paper like that in other magazines nowadays."

"George Orwell, who is speaking to you now- is the novelist and journalist, best known for as the author of Road to Wigan Pier."

If anyone else can find any other instances, it would be greatly appreciated.

I'll try to track some down - they're few & far between. I'm sure a couple of his essays have the odd bright moment.

In terms of novels, Coming up for Air springs to mind - there are a few genuinely funny passages in there. Easily the lightest read of all Orwell's books.

Chapter 3 1984 has a humourous feel, smith must partake in the "physical jerks"early in the morning whilst maintaining a grin, thinking about the time before the revolution. This passage has the lucid quality of a dream but then smith is sucked back to his physical jerks with his hands on hips gyrating his body and forcing his shoulders back for the 100th time.
Conjoured up an image that made me smile, whether it was meant to be in good humour or not i do not know, have a re-read and see what you think.

yeah, I remember that part of 1984, I guess it did have its comical moments.

Also, here's one from Down and Out in Paris and London that I found to be really funny:

(pg. 7 for reference)
"There were the Roudiers, for instance, and old, ragged, dwarfish couple who plied an extroadinary trade. They used to sell post cards on the Boulevard St. Michel. The curious thing was that the post cards were sold in seald packets as pornographic ones, but were actually photographs of chateaux on the Loire; the buyers did not discover this till too late, and of course never complained. The Rougiers earned about a hundred francs a week, and by strict economy, managed to be always half starved and half drunk."

Down and Out in Paris and London seems to be Orwell's funniest book because there are so many peculiarities of the working people in the densely populated areas. It might even surpass 1984 as my favorite book, since it has an open ending.

Still, houses are being built, and the Corporation building estates,
with their row upon row of little red houses, all much liker than two. peas
(where did that expression come from? Peas have great individuality) are a
regular feature of the outskirts of the industrial towns.

I think this is a good example of Orwells dry humour coming through, And I agree that peas do have great individuality.
:thumbs_up

In a Lancashire cotton-town you could probably go for months on end without once hearing an 'educated' accent, whereas there can hardly be a town in the South of England where you could throw a brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.


:D:D:D:thumbs_up

George bowling took charge and defended eleven tins of bully beef for nearly two years 1917-1919, well him and private Lidgebird.
Its a very funny passage of coming up for air and well worth reading again, its starts at chapter 8 and stands alone very well even if you have not read the rest of the book.
Quintessentially english humour, clever and subtle and does conjour up images of the great Dads army.

I am only part way through this book at present, but it has struck me that Orwell whatever his situation could almost always see humour in his situation.

He frequently sticks his head up above the parapet to hear the bullets fly past him. People only got hit through luck you see.:D

He forays into Fascist territory in a boy scouting fashion and creeps upon their lines to listen in.:D

Makes much merriment from the fact the illiterate militias cannot remember the passwords from their own side, and get shot at.:D

The use of propoganda via megaphone, whose best vocal weapon was to taunt the fascists with shouts of "we are eating toast with butter over here mmmmm.":D

The appaling shot of the spanish and the frequent casualities which were self inflicted.:)

Also at the end of Homage to Catalonia after Orwell has been shot in the neck he rushes to a Government office to try and ensure the freedom of his commanding general in the frontline. It is only once he has arrived and at great speed and is sitting in the office of the governmental official that he remembers he cannot speak and delivers in a series of squeaks, whispers and whines the case for the generals release, whilst the official listens mid plea he sits wondering what the hell the official thinks of this English madman :D

I was reading the Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell (1920-1940) and I found another instance of his humor that was in a letter to Jack Common on the subject of maintaining his livestock at the house that he is renting to him.

"About February we'll have to think of getting Muriel (a goat owned by the Blairs) mated, but there's no hurry. Whatever happens don't let her go to that broken-down old wreck of Mr Nicholls's (a neighbor), who is simply worn out by about twenty years of ****ing his own sisters, daughters, grand-daughters and great-grand-daughters.
Yours
Eric"

I like even more when Orwell has a straight-forward sense of humor that anybody can understand. Some of his lines in his novels require an invested interest and a good sense of imagery to see the humor in the situation. But it seems that every now and then he gets tired of the intellectual type of humor and heads for something more base and easily understood.

I love the bit in Politics and the English Language where he gives examples of bad writing, and then talks about mixed metaphor later on in the essay.

"The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company."

The playing ducks and drakes with a battery that can write prescriptions never fails to amuse me, and to my ear, you almost hear Orwell sniggering to himself about the Fascist Octopus singing away. He makes serious points, but this passage always makes me laugh. I also like the passage where he takes a sideswipe at himself, saying that his essay probably contains most of the things he's complaining about.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by burmesedays

yeah, I remember that part of 1984, I guess it did have its comical moments.

Also, here's one from Down and Out in Paris and London that I found to be really funny:

(pg. 7 for reference)
"There were the Roudiers, for instance, and old, ragged, dwarfish couple who plied an extroadinary trade. They used to sell post cards on the Boulevard St. Michel. The curious thing was that the post cards were sold in seald packets as pornographic ones, but were actually photographs of chateaux on the Loire; the buyers did not discover this till too late, and of course never complained. The Rougiers earned about a hundred francs a week, and by strict economy, managed to be always half starved and half drunk."

Down and Out in Paris and London seems to be Orwell's funniest book because there are so many peculiarities of the working people in the densely populated areas. It might even surpass 1984 as my favorite book, since it has an open ending.

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I still laugh out loud every time I read the first few pages of Down and Out. The description of everyone hanging out the windows and hollering at each other just cracks me up for some reason!

I also found myself laughing throughout 1984, although I'm drawing a bit of a blank at the moment. If nothing else Orwell's descriptions of some of Winston's coworkers were pretty amusing.