by Sharon O'Connell

Created on: May 24, 2009   Last Updated: May 28, 2009

Reflections on Ambition and Ability

There is no doubt that I have a strong political bias. I have often wondered about the effect of this bias on my writing. It has been my goal these past three semesters to learn to write, to create something meaningful to myself, and hopefully something that may one day have some political significance. Aside from mere bias, I have considered whether or not my political ambition has inspired or inhibited my writing.

I found encouragement in A Collection of Essays by George Orwell. In both "Politics and the English Language" and "Why I Write," Orwell touches on both ability and ambition and their effects on language. While the essays inspired me to persist in writing a political novel, they made me aware of the need to be far more attentive to my language choices.

The essay "Why I Write," addresses many of my concerns about using one's political beliefs to create fiction. Orwell writes that because politics and living are inseparable, a writer's "subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in (311). It is a statement of fact that is true nearly 50 years after it was originally written.

He gives four main reasons why writers write: ego, appreciation of language, recording of history, and political ambition. He explains that early in his writing career, he would have comfortably fit into the first three categories (312-313).

Until the Spanish Civil War, he claims to have had little interest in politics. He readily admits that nearly everything he wrote following the war has "been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" (314).

He relies on his bias, his sense of injustice to create his stories. His goal is to start with the injustice that outraged him, capture the reader's attention and "get a hearing" (315) on the matter. Had it not been for his belief that innocent men were falsely accused by the press, he might not have written Homage to Catalonia.

Though he does not place his motives for writing above any other writer, he notes that when his writing "lacked political purpose...[he] wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally" (316).

Having argued that drawing upon political bias is acceptable in order to write fiction, Orwell warns that the credibility of one's writing is affected by the ability to recognize one's own bias. He believes that this recognition increases the chances

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