Book Review 1

Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell

I did not think this book was strictly a war memoir but I may be wrong in that, as I cannot claim to have read more than one or two war memoirs before this. However, a war memoir according to me would be a private narration strictly in the words of a soldier. And Orwell in this book does not appear a strict soldier throughout. Nor is his narration as private. He is more of an analyst of the war; at least more so as the book progresses.

The beginning of the book is almost childlike in its enthusiasm for the revolution and for the fight against Franco the Fascist general-dictator. At more than one instance, Orwell talks about the war as if it were an ideological decision. To fight in favor of what he thought was undoubtedly the right, against the wrong; to fight for the rights of man – democracy, liberty and equality. The very first page of the book describes the strong impression an Italian militiaman had on Orwell. In describing this man Orwell makes him larger than life and talks about how this vision of one man signifies to him the “special atmosphere of the time”. He talks of the man as one who could kill for a friend, who had the “pathetic reverence that illiterate people have for their supposed superiors”. Orwell at the same time admits that he knew that the only way to preserve this impression was to never see the man again. Reading between the lines Orwell seems to me to be saying that he felt the romance and the idealism of the war that that one man represented for him at the moment, and also knew that the very emotions that he stood for, or that special moment itself, were fragile and could not be relived again. Once in the book Orwell credits the idealism to the inherent values of the Spaniards; to their cultural generosity and humaneness. His words “something rather pathetic in the literalness with which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrases of revolution” express his awe, admiration and strange tragic pity for the Spaniards all at once. It is almost as if he were saying that the Spaniards are too good to be living in this world and feeling sorry for them for the same reason.

Orwell’s description of the society in Catalonia as he sees it for the first time is very important especially because later the book contrasts this description with the changes that are obvious in just a few months. In December 1936, Orwell saw the revolution is full swing. The Anarchists were in control, industries had been collectivized, tipping was prohibited, there were no private cars, revolutionary posters could be seen all over the place, etc. He talks about there being no unemployment and no beggars, yet poverty and a severe food shortage, especially that of bread. And at the same time, bread was being wasted in the militia camps. Repeatedly the filth and chaos, and the unpreparedness and inefficiencies of the militia are mentioned. These little details represent the situation as one that was not stable, was inevitable to collapse. He implies this in retrospect especially, when he says that he overlooked to observe that many individuals could then have been impersonating as revolutionaries simply to save their skin, and the situation was not therefore as equal and liberated as it felt it was.

And yet Orwell says that what he experienced then was as close to a pure idea of equality that humans can achieve. Especially at the front, where all soldiers were equal and there were no rank or pay differences. At one point in the book, he talks about how it wasn’t as difficult to get people to obey orders even without the fear of superiors, as it may seem. And he explains how – in fact in the workers’ army discipline is a voluntary concept based on the consciousness of the need to obey, compared with that in a bourgeois army where discipline is simply based on fear. He himself uses the word “theoretically” to describe such voluntariness and one would think that such theory would be impossible to achieve in a large mass of people like a force or an army. But he surprises the reader by telling us that it did work though it took some time to get everyone to believe in it. I would however, still doubt that it could work everywhere. I rather think it needed the combination of the prevailing ‘atmosphere’ then and the inherent goodness (according to Orwell) of the Spaniards to achieve it. But that is a matter of pure opinion, and nevertheless I regard Orwell as having been lucky to have experienced such utopia.

The description of the actual war in the book, that is the days when Orwell spends at the front, reveals, as he admits, the non-war-like nature of it. Throughout the book he uses words like pantomime, racket etc. to describe the war. Add to that, the lack of weapons, fighting and battle. It is quite comic when on the front he states that most casualties were because of their own substandard weapons. Actually the dry humor comes up quite often in the days spent on the front; say for example, when Orwell says his life was saved more than once because of the marksmanship of the Spaniards. Moreover, in Orwell’s words, “the real weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone”. The whole concept of fighting by shouting at the enemy to have him convert over to your side sounded hilarious to me and so must it have to Orwell, and yet he says it was sometimes effective. Moreover, his words “deserters are actually more useful to you than corpses” brings home the logic behind it. The sad thing is that much of this kind of logic is seen to be missing from collective human minds in times of war. Most of the war described by him is defensive in nature, both at the front and during the street fighting.

The book also in a way gives an outsider’s opinion of some cultural aspects of the Spaniards. Orwell talks of them as being embarrassingly generous, chaotic, undisciplined, lacking the skills for warfare; and more so, lacking the intention to maximize their advantages in war. The humor is even more effective because as a reader one realizes that it is not his intention to sound funny, but simply that the situation was so ridiculous and laughable. According to him the very few weapons that they had were also not handed out such that the best men would have the best guns. Moreover, the few days when they receive some training before being dispatched to the front, is more an exercise in marching and not a single man is taught how to fire rifles or how to throw hand-grenades. He describes many young boys enlisting as “children” and talks of their excitement as being almost boy-scoutish. I often got the feeling that the whole thing was a matter of play for many people.

The only time he talks about the glory of war is when he is describing the sight of the Italian troops belonging to the International Column being seen off by the crowds at the Tarragona station. That vision described by him is impressive. He tells of the wounded and disabled in war cheering the fresh and healthy soldiers going off to war; and says that the sight revived the feeling that “war is glorious after all”. His words in these paragraphs bring back something of the ancient wars where there used to be codes for war and warriors were known to be brave and heroic.

Because of the manner in which Orwell brings out the political hostilities of the various parties even within the anti-Fascists, one comes off with the feeling of men being used as pawns. Very few people actually fighting are aware (according to Orwell) of what is actually going on. Each person seems to have a private reason for fighting and very often Orwell says in very clear words that facts are withheld knowingly from the forces at the front; and that sometimes this is justifiable but often not.

The feeling of men being used as pawns becomes even more emphasized when he talks of a possible reason for arresting the P.O.U.M militia being, to stop the news of the repression of the P.O.U.M. party carrying onto the front, which would discourage their people from fighting. Also he repeatedly talks of individuals from the forces of these parties as different from the minds ruling the parties. He emphasizes this by repeatedly telling the reader that away from the street fighting, all these forces were friendly with each other. And even on the front, the political rivalry could not be seen amongst the forces. The difference becomes stark Orwell explains the ban and the maligning of the P.O.U.M. which led to the hunting down of P.O.U.M. men mostly by the Communist secret police. Like he says he was never accused of being a Trotskyist or a Fascist spy by any rival forces at the front. In fact, from Orwell’s narration another point that comes across is the ineffectiveness of even the government in much of the political mishap that happened after the Barcelona street fighting. Also Orwell manages to convince the reader in the apparent autonomy of the Communist secret police which implies that they were acting under foreign interests. In fact he quotes some government officials and the evidence does seem to point at the Russian role and the helplessness of the government against it. Also the important point that Orwell manages to establish is that even the government the charges against the P.O.U.M. although they could not stop the arrests.

In comparing the situation of December 1936 with that which prevailed when Orwell returned to civil society after his first stint at the front, he describes what he called “swinging it (the revolution) back” by the Communists and Liberals; something he admits he hadn’t grasped earlier on as being possible to do. He talks about the sudden change in civil society where people had lost interest in the war, class and income divisions of society were reasserting themselves, beggars had sprung up, tipping was back in practice, the Popular Army was touted as being heroic and the other militias were blamed to be undisciplined etc., luxurious expenditures were back. And there was a general expectation of ‘trouble’ in the air.

After the street fighting in Barcelona things got even worse. Now, instead of people joining the militia voluntarily, they were being conscripted; which meant that they could no longer voluntarily quit and were regarded as ‘deserters’ if they did so. There was even worse censoring of newspapers, such that censored portions were filled up with other matter. Something that made the shortage of food worse for the people, especially so for the poor, was that there was now a shortage of small change of currency. When the P.O.U.M. was banned, it suddenly became safe to act bourgeois whereas when Orwell had first come to the country brimming with revolution, the only way to be safe was to look like a worker.

The political analysis of the war is the best treasure that the book holds. It is that, and the journalistic account of what happened during the Barcelona street fighting, that makes this book a document more than just a reference for the Spanish Civil War. Like Orwell says himself, “on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan”, no account of such a war should be believed without doubt. And yet, Orwell’s arguments and analysis are difficult to be branded as outright lies, and this is more because in most of the analysis Orwell does seem to be exposing the lies in the media rather than single someone out for blame. The book is more an effort to expose the plot to frame the P.O.U.M. party rather than to frame someone else.

His arguments are more in defence rather than an attempt at accusation and that is a more decent way to argue. In fact, Orwell himself states that earlier on in the war he was more inclined to agree with the Communist version and that he also thought it was them doing the real fighting. He is honest enough to accept that although he saw the romance in the revolution, it wasn’t easy for him to believe in the feasibility of the idea. And yet his loyalties for the P.O.U.M. party become stronger once he realized its unfair victim status in the local politics. He states some very reasonable arguments against the blame put on the P.O.U.M. (that they were Fascist spies) – and even provides post mortem analysis that reveals that the accusations on the party were never proven.

Plus, Orwell tries to give the broader picture that brings the Spanish Civil War in the context of world support and interests and Russian Communism. Orwell also has made a reasonable effort to separate words like Socialism and Communism, and to explain others like Trotskyism. The most important of these that I got from this book was the earlier mysterious concept to me of how Communism could be right-winged and of the Capitalist interests in any Communist agendas. All that he says gives a reasonable reason for how the various European countries behaved while this was going on, and how as he says “the whole world was determined upon preventing revolution in Spain” because of the interests that their investments in the country had built. The revolution was not mentioned in the foreign media because the best way to stop the revolution was to not recognize its existence.

There are however, a couple of points that Orwell makes, that one is not so convinced of, as a reader. He says that there was little doubt that arms were deliberately held from them so as to keep the Anarchists and revolutionary forces from having access to them once the fighting against Franco was over. This claim of his may or may not be true, because for once he does not give any basis for such a claim, other than the suspicion of a motive and an opportunity.

I think the most important point that the book makes, is about war propaganda. Orwell says “One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” This is so true almost everywhere in the world, even if those who have fought do talk to the world, it is almost always after the war is over; and hardly ever such that it can stop the exploitation of the emotion of war. The press, and the governments (foreign or local), are the ones who take control of the war and it is almost as if they maneuver it to strike upon that which benefits them most. Such a scapegoat in this war was the P.O.U.M. the one small-numbered, weak party that had no representation in any press outside of Spain, and the party that considered the war against Fascism synonymous with revolution (suppressing them was the surest way to kill the revolution).

The details about the secret jails and imprisoned people who were never tried and were denied access to even lawyers; and their secret exterminations in prison shows the covertness of the whole incident. The entire setting reminds one of Orwell’s later Nineteen Eighty Four, as it should because he wove that story around these experiences. And yet in this book Orwell says something to the effect that after Spain, his belief in humanity grew stronger.