windpipe and his carotid artery. A mil-
limeter’s difference in either direction
probably would have finished him. His
comrades put him on a stretcher, a doctor
bandaged the wound, and Orwell recov-
ered in a hospital.
In the weeks that followed he had to
escape death again. He had gone to
Spain to fight for socialism and against
fascism. (This was an era in which writ-
ers took up arms for the causes they
believed in, rather than just tweeted
about them.) Yet Stalin’s stooges regard-
ed him as insufficiently loyal to their
master in Moscow. They targeted him
for execution. Orwell evaded these
would-be murderers in Barcelona long
enough to flee by train to France and
safety. This experience, according to
Rodden, became “the decisive event that
transformed Orwell into a fearlessly
outspoken anti-Communist for the rest
of his life.” It made possible the work
for which he is most remembered: his
essays and novels of the 1940s, his final
decade. It also launched a debate about
the true nature of Orwell’s politics—one
that still rages today.
Last year witnessed an anniversary of
equidistance for Orwell’s best-known
work, called “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in
Britain and “1984” in the United States.
In other words, 2019 marked 35 years
from the novel’s eponym, which arrived
35 years after its first publication, in- Lots of people who know the book
only by reputation are familiar with its
major themes as well as its vocabulary of
“thoughtcrime” and “memory holes.”
They may even use the adjective
“Orwellian”—a word that, ironically,
has come to mean the freedom-crushing
systems and methods that Orwell him-
self despised.
Rodden has devoted much of his
career to Orwell, starting with his 1989
book The Politics of Literary Reputa tion,
which examines the sources of Orwell’s
fame. This latest volume is a grab-bag
of Orwelliana. In one piece, Rodden
observes that Orwell’s memoir Homage
to Catalonia—in which the author
describes getting shot—is “the most
widely read nonfiction book on the
Spanish Civil War in any language.” In
another, he makes a case for the impor-
tance of an early essay on a hanging in
Burma. He also considers Orwell’s con-
nections to the French writer Albert
Camus, the ways in which American
‘T
HEwhole experience of
being hit by a bullet is
very interesting,” wrote
George Orwell—a line
that bursts with dry humor, written by a
man who could be witty but rarely was
comic. Yet there was nothing funny
about what happened to Orwell at dawn
on May 20, 1937, as he fought in the
Spanish Civil War. With the rising sun at
his back and probably outlining his head,
he was struck in the throat by a sniper’s
bullet. It passed through his neck and
blood gushed from his mouth. He
couldn’t feel his right arm. “I took it for
granted that I was done for.”
If he had been done for, readers never
would have learned that “some animals
are more equal than others” or that “Big
Brother is watching you.” They never
would have wrestled with his essays on
the dangers of imperialism or the politics
of language. If they had known him at
all—and even this is doubtful—it would
have been as a minor English novelist
and journalist. It certainly would not
have been as “the most important writer
since Shakespeare and the most influen-
tial writer who has ever lived,” as the
Texas-based scholar John Rodden calls
him in Becoming George Orwell.
Readers were lucky, and so was Orwell.
The bullet had penetrated between his
SPONSORED BYNational Review Institute 45Becoming George Orwell: Life and Letters, Legend
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