Homage to Catalonia Essay

Submitted By gtron18
Words: 463
Pages: 2

In his book “Homage to Catalonia”, George Orwell chronicles his time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War as both a journalist and a soldier of sorts. Originally, he went over as a journalist for a British newspaper but soon upon his arrival he joined arms in the cause to defeat the Fascist military led by Franco. Despite the reading, I find Orwell’s political idealology difficult to decipher and cannot tell if he would consider himself an anarchist but I can certainly tell that he is sympathetic to the cause and the school of thought. One of the greatest pieces of evidence throughout the book is an Orwell’s general overtone towards the anarchists. Despite the fact that he ended up fighting for the Trotskyist militia during the war, his demeanor towards the National Confederation of Labor and the Iberian Anarchist Federation was always pretty positive. In the book he even goes as far as to say that he would have rather enlisted with the Anarchists but circumstances prevented him from doing so. While not coming out and directly saying he was an anarchist he deffienelty has points where he is very positive about it. Truthfully, I think that Orwell’s political idealology is very in line with a sort of democratic socialism. His place in fighting against the Fascist Franco would be more about displacing fascism than being a true anarchist. This said, I could see Orwell having a perspective that was that anarchism was a means to an end to achieve a form of socialism. He speaks with admiration about the possibility of socialism in Spain and goes as far as to say that "instead of disillusioning me it deeply attracted me. The effect was to make my desire to see Socialism