Comparing Orwell And A Hanging

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, was born in India. He was later educated in England and joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He aspired to pursue a career in writing after resigning from the Police force; experiencing little success, he took on many amateurish jobs in order to receive any income he could. Eventually he went on to publish a handful of pieces, those of which include A Hanging published in 1931 and Marrakech published in 1939. In both of these pieces, Orwell develops the pressing theme of dehumanization throughout the cultures he observed over various decades by taking away persons’ humanly features. He develops these themes throughout the two pieces by making many comparisons to animals when describing the members of these cultures thereby taking away their human features. Also, he creates sympathy in both texts for animals, however develops very little sympathy for the humans of the stories. Lastly, he straightforwardly describes to the reader that he does not see how these people he walks among are of the same flesh as he. By taking away features, which differentiate us from other mammals, he dehumanizes these cultures.

At the beginning of the essay he compares the children to a “cloud of flies,” which allows the reader to imagine these poor children as one of the simplest, most pesky insects on the planet. In doing so, he takes away there humanly features. Similarly, in his essay A Hanging, he initially places an image of these Burmese prisoners living in animal cage-like cells into the readers' minds. Similarly, near the end of the essay he also compares the Senegalese army to a flock of cattle as they march down the streets. Once again, this shows that he wants the reader to imagine them as more of a flock or a cluster of animals and insects instead of a group of individuals who are all of human