Editing George Orwell (section)

===Reception and evaluations of Orwell's works===
[[File:The Playhouse 1984 London Cinema Marquee.jpg|thumb|right|Production of the play ''[[1984 (play)|1984]]'' at the [[Playhouse Theatre]] in the [[West End theatre|West End]]. Orwell's works have been adapted for stage, screen and television. They have also inspired commercials and songs, and he is often quoted. Historian John Rodden called him a "cultural icon".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rodden |first1=John |title=The Unexamined Orwell |date=2012 |publisher=University of Texas Press |page=4}}</ref>]]
Arthur Koestler said that Orwell's "uncompromising intellectual honesty made him appear almost inhuman at times".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.orwelltoday.com/orwellpersona.shtml|title=5.Orwell's Persona|website=orwelltoday.com}}</ref> [[Ben Wattenberg]] stated: "Orwell's writing pierced intellectual hypocrisy wherever he found it."<ref name="thinktank">{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript990.html|title=PBS: Think Tank: Transcript for 'Orwell's Century'|publisher=PBS|access-date=25 February 2015}}</ref> According to historian [[Piers Brendon]], "Orwell was the saint of common decency who would in earlier days, said his BBC boss [[Rushbrook Williams]], 'have been either canonised—or burnt at the stake{{'"}}.<ref>{{Cite news|newspaper=The Guardian |location=UK |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/07/biography.georgeorwell|title=The saint of common decency|first=Piers|last=Brendon|date=7 June 2003}}</ref> [[Raymond Williams]] in ''[[Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review]]'' describes Orwell as a "successful impersonation of a plain man who bumps into experience in an unmediated way and tells the truth about it".<ref>Raymond Williams ''Politics and Letters'' 1979</ref> [[Christopher Norris (critic)|Christopher Norris]] declared that Orwell's "homespun empiricist outlook—his assumption that the truth was just there to be told in a straightforward common-sense way—now seems not merely naïve but culpably self-deluding".<ref>Christopher Norris ''Language, Truth and Ideology: Orwell and the Post War Left'' in ''Inside the Myth: Orwell views from the Left'' Lawrence and Whishart 1984</ref> The American scholar Scott Lucas has described Orwell as an enemy of the Left.<ref>Lucas, Scott (2003). ''Orwell''. Haus Publishing. {{ISBN|1904341330}}</ref> John Newsinger has argued that Lucas could only do this by portraying "all of Orwell's attacks on Stalinism [–] as if they were attacks on socialism, despite Orwell's continued insistence that they were not".<ref>{{cite web|author=O. Dag |url=http://orwell.ru/a_life/newsinger/english/e_oc |title=John Newsinger: Orwell Centenary: The Biographies |language=ru |publisher=Orwell.ru |access-date=14 May 2014}}</ref>

Orwell's work has taken a prominent place in the school literature curriculum in England,<ref>Rodden (1989: 394–395)</ref> with ''Animal Farm'' a regular examination topic at the end of secondary education ([[GCSE]]), and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' a topic for subsequent examinations below university level ([[A Level]]s). A 2016 UK poll saw ''Animal Farm'' ranked the nation's favourite book from school.<ref>{{cite news |title=George Orwell's Animal Farm tops list of the nation's favourite books from school |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/george-orwells-animal-farm-tops-list-of-the-nations-favourite-books-from-school-a6994351.html |access-date=10 April 2020 |work=The Independent}}</ref>

The historian John Rodden stated: "[[John Podhoretz]] did claim that if Orwell were alive today, he'd be standing with the [[neo-conservatives]] and against the Left. And the question arises, to what extent can you even begin to predict the political positions of somebody who's been dead three decades and more by that time?"<ref name="thinktank"/>

Rodden notes the "undeniable conservative features in the Orwell physiognomy" and remarks on how "to some extent Orwell facilitated the kinds of uses and abuses by the Right that his name has been put to. In other ways there has been the politics of selective quotation."<ref name="thinktank"/> Rodden refers to the essay "[[Why I Write]]",<ref name=whyiwrite>{{Cite web |title=Why I Write |last=Orwell |first=George |website=The Orwell Foundation |publisher=Gangrel No. 4|date=Summer 1946 |url= https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/|quote=Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.}}</ref> in which Orwell refers to the Spanish Civil War as being his "watershed political experience", saying: "The Spanish War and other events in 1936–37, turned the scale. Thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly ''against'' totalitarianism and ''for'' democratic socialism as I understand it." (emphasis in original)<ref name="thinktank"/> Rodden goes on to explain how, during the McCarthy era, the introduction to the Signet edition of ''Animal Farm'' makes use of selective quotation:
{{blockquote|
"[''Introduction'']: If the book itself, ''Animal Farm'', had left any doubt of the matter, Orwell dispelled it in his essay ''Why I Write'': 'Every line of serious work that I've written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against Totalitarianism&nbsp;....'<br />[''Rodden'']: dot, dot, dot, dot, the politics of ellipsis. 'For Democratic Socialism' is vaporized, just like Winston Smith did it at the Ministry of Truth, and that's very much what happened at the beginning of the McCarthy era and just continued, Orwell being selectively quoted."<ref name="thinktank"/>}}

Fyvel wrote about Orwell: <blockquote>His crucial experience&nbsp;[...] was his struggle to turn himself into a writer, one which led through long periods of poverty, failure and humiliation, and about which he has written almost nothing directly. The sweat and agony was less in the slum-life than in the effort to turn the experience into literature.<ref>Fyvel, T.R., "A Writer's Life", ''World Review'', June 1950</ref><ref>Fyvel, T.R., "A Case for George Orwell?", ''Twentieth Century'', September 1956, pp. 257–258</ref></blockquote>

Conversely, the historian [[Isaac Deutscher]] was far more critical of Orwell from a [[Marxist]] perspective and characterised him as a "simple minded [[anarchist]]". Deutscher argued that Orwell had struggled to comprehend the dialectical philosophy of Marxism, demonstrated personal ambivalence towards [[Anti-Stalinist Left|other strands of socialism]] and his works such as ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' had been appropriated for the purpose of [[anti-communist]] [[Cold War]] propaganda.<ref>{{cite web |title=1984 - The Mysticism of Cruelty, by Isaac Deutscher 1955 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1955/1984.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Newsinger |first1=J. |title=Orwell's Politics |date=17 January 1999 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-0-333-98360-7 |page=123 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rURaCwAAQBAJ&dq=deutscher+orwell&pg=PA123 |language=en}}</ref>