George Orwell, Doubleness, and the Value of Decency (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

In its analysis of Animal Farm , Burmese Days , Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Nineteen Eighty-Four , this book argues that George Orwell’s fiction and non-fiction weigh the benefits and costs of adopting a doubled perspective – in other words, seeing one’s own interests in relation to those of others – and illustrate how decency follows from such a perspective. Establishing this relationship within Orwell’s work, Anthony Stewart demonstrates how Orwell’s characters’ ability to treat others decently depends upon the characters’ relative capacities for doubleness.