George Orwell as a Religious Aspirant after the Humanities

Abstract

This paper focuses on the themes of religion and the humanities in George Orwell’s most representative works―Animal Farm and 1984. This paper starts with Orwell’s assumed attitude about orthodox religion. Based on the general agreement that Orwell was quite critical and satirical of hypocritical religious practice, particularly of Catholicism in his times, this paper analyzes the literary implications related to the theme of religion manifested in the two novels. Subsequently, this paper suggests that in Orwell’s literature the world of the humanities generally represented by history, literature and philosophy takes a far more significant position than the transcendental world of orthodox religion. How Orwell might have valued―the sacred role of the humanities in the modern world, is explained in minute detail based on textual analysis and critical imagination. In conclusion, part of George Orwell’s greatness as a writer owes to his acute awareness of the important mission of the humanities fields as powerful as religion, the failure of which would possibly lead to dystopias of diverse kinds in the future.