Orwell - Post Great War Awakening
Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 6:56 am
Hi John and all,
I found a passage in "The Road to Wigan Pier" which I couldn't let slip by with respect to generational dynamics. This is from the third paragraph of chapter IX:
But those years, during and just after the war [ WWI ], were a queer time to be at school, for England was nearer revolution than she has been since or had been for a century earlier. Throughout almost the whole nation there was running a wave of revolutionary feeling which has since been reversed and forgotten, but which has left various deposits of sediment behind it. Essentially, though of course one could not then see it in perspective, it was a revolt of youth against age, resulting directly from the war. In the war the young had been sacrificed and the old had behaved in a way which, even at this distance of time, is horrible to contemplate; they had been sternly patriotic in safe places while their sons went down like swathes of hay before the German machine guns. Moreover, the war had been conducted mainly by old men and had been conducted with supreme incompetence. By 1918 every one under forty was in a bad temper with his elders and the mood of anti-militarism which followed naturally upon the fighting was extended into a general revolt against orthodoxy and authority. At that time there was among the young, a curious cult of hatred of "old men." The dominance of "old men" was held to be responsible for every evil known to humanity, and every accepted institution from Scott's novels to the House of Lords was derided merely because "old men" were in favour of it. For several years it was all the fashion to be a "Bolshie," as people then called it. England was full of half-baked antinomian opinions. Pacificism, internationalism, humanitarianism of all kinds, feminism, free love, divorce reform, atheism, birth-control--things like these were getting a better hearing than they would get in normal times. And of course the revolutionary mood extended to those who had been too young to fight, even to schoolboys. (emphasis mine)
The events described sound very much like a crisis pre-war and then a 1960's style awakening shortly after. Orwell was born in 1903. If he was an American he would be in the hero generation. Is Britain still out of sync with the U.S. generation-wise? If not, when did it sync up, and are there patterns to that sort of thing?
Anyways, food for thought. Cheers.
-Ridgel
I found a passage in "The Road to Wigan Pier" which I couldn't let slip by with respect to generational dynamics. This is from the third paragraph of chapter IX:
But those years, during and just after the war [ WWI ], were a queer time to be at school, for England was nearer revolution than she has been since or had been for a century earlier. Throughout almost the whole nation there was running a wave of revolutionary feeling which has since been reversed and forgotten, but which has left various deposits of sediment behind it. Essentially, though of course one could not then see it in perspective, it was a revolt of youth against age, resulting directly from the war. In the war the young had been sacrificed and the old had behaved in a way which, even at this distance of time, is horrible to contemplate; they had been sternly patriotic in safe places while their sons went down like swathes of hay before the German machine guns. Moreover, the war had been conducted mainly by old men and had been conducted with supreme incompetence. By 1918 every one under forty was in a bad temper with his elders and the mood of anti-militarism which followed naturally upon the fighting was extended into a general revolt against orthodoxy and authority. At that time there was among the young, a curious cult of hatred of "old men." The dominance of "old men" was held to be responsible for every evil known to humanity, and every accepted institution from Scott's novels to the House of Lords was derided merely because "old men" were in favour of it. For several years it was all the fashion to be a "Bolshie," as people then called it. England was full of half-baked antinomian opinions. Pacificism, internationalism, humanitarianism of all kinds, feminism, free love, divorce reform, atheism, birth-control--things like these were getting a better hearing than they would get in normal times. And of course the revolutionary mood extended to those who had been too young to fight, even to schoolboys. (emphasis mine)
The events described sound very much like a crisis pre-war and then a 1960's style awakening shortly after. Orwell was born in 1903. If he was an American he would be in the hero generation. Is Britain still out of sync with the U.S. generation-wise? If not, when did it sync up, and are there patterns to that sort of thing?
Anyways, food for thought. Cheers.
-Ridgel