In George Orwell’s essay “Why I write”, the author explains the nature of writing by identifying four main motivational forces and then arrives at conclusion that seeking the truth , which he calls, political purpose is the strongest driver in creating a good book. Orwell describes writing motivators of egoism, enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose in how they comprise any writer’s desire to write. He begins by describing his first attempts creating primitive texts and explores the importance of child’s imagination as the foundation for future creations. Orwell continues with his teenage memories of how he became hypnotized by the beauty of words. He suggests that it is impossible to figure out any writer’s current motivation without exploring and understanding their earlier stages. In the next part of the essay he depicts how a writer’s values change over the course of their life and as a result of their experience. He admits that when it happens, the task of connecting artistic expression with political purpose becomes the most challenging aspect of writing. Regardless of the evolving writing motives described, Orwell confesses that there is always a mystery at the bottom of those motives he refers to as the political purpose and without this component the book cannot be good.
Categories
1 reply on “Why I write”
Hi Nikolai! So you’ve got a detailed description of Orwell’s piece BUT you want to stick to the MEAL strategy so there’s more cohesion here. You start off with a really great main idea sentence. It tells me you’re interested in Orwell’s interest in “seeking the truth” as a main motivation for writing. IF that is really your main idea sentence and your interest, what follows should be an example of when he talks about SEEKING THE TRUTH. Instead, here you have a sentence that goes back to summarizing the general idea of writing motivators. It might seem tedious at first, but the MEAL strategy is really meant to force you to leave things out of your summary that get in the way of proving your M sentence. I wondered if one thing you COULD do for your WEDNESDAY summary is compose a TWO paragraph summary. This will give you opportunities to talk about multiple Main ideas. Here, for example, you could have two paragraphs– one that focuses on his general ideas on motivators of writing, the other that focuses on seeking the truth.
Great job and don’t forget to review your writing for missing articles [the conclusion, a child’s]