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Comparing George Orwell's A Hanging, Wells Hitler And The World State

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George Orwell is a world renowned author who wrote several books and many texts that are continually relevant to today’s society. He paints a vivid picture in several of his essays about the world during war and capital punishment that remains relevant to society today. While most of this may seem irrelevant to our society and current events in this day and age many of the essays he has written are. One can see this clearly in the similarities between our world today and Orwell’s essays “A Hanging” and “Wells, Hitler and the World State.” Capital punishment was a common form of punishment in history, and dates back to the 16th century BC where it’s first recorded account took place in Egypt where a member of nobility was accused of performing …show more content…

In 1808 Samuel Romilly introduced the first set of reforms to remove some of the 200 plus capital offences in England. (Stephen-Stratford) Orwell writes, “I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.” This quote from his essay “A Hanging” expresses his Anti-Capitalist views which are shared amongst many people in the time, and in the world today. The Universal Declaration for Human rights states in Article 3 that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” (UDHR) By using capital punishment, specifically death sentences, one is in direct violation of a person’s human rights. The question that Orwell raises in this essay is, Does the crime justify the blatant disregard for human rights? Since 1976 there have been 1,436 executions in the US as of August 30th, 2016. (DPIC) In “A Hanging” Orwell specifically omits the crime committed by the hanged prisoner in order to prevent the reader from justifying the person 's death through his crime. By preventing the …show more content…

G. Wells’ view of Hitler and Nazi Germany, and his own rebuttal of those very views. While we are not currently in a world war, many countries are currently at war. In Africa there are 29 countries and 211 extremists/terrorist/separatist groups at war, Asia has 16 countries and 167 extremists/terrorist/separatist groups at war. In Europe there are 10 countries and 80 extremists/terrorist/separatist groups at war. In the Middle East there are 7 countries and 237 extremists/terrorist/separatist groups at war. In the Americas there are 6 countries and 26 drug cartels/extremists/terrorist/separatist groups at war. Overall, there are currently 67 countries and 722 extremists/terrorist/separatist groups at war. (Wars in the World) This number, While staggering, still isn’t the full number of ongoing wars, just a number of countries involved in some type of war. The world may not be at war collectively, but a large portion of it is at war currently, making Orwell’s points in this essay relevant to our society in this day and age. As mentioned in “Wells, Hitler and the world state” Wells discusses what he believes a Utopian world state would be in several articles that were re-printed in Wells’ book Guide to the New World. Orwell believes that this is an unnecessary thing and begs the question “What is the use of pointing out that a World State is desirable?” He answers his own question by stating “What matters is

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Living through the first half of the twentieth century, George Orwell watched the rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Soviet Union. Fighting in Spain, he witnessed the brutalities of the fascists and Stalinists first hand. His experiences awakened him to the evils of a totalitarian government. In his novel 1984, Orwell paints a dark and pessimistic vision of the future where society is completely controlled by a totalitarian government. He uses symbolism and the character’s developments to show the nature of total power in a government and the extremes it will go through to retain that power by repressing individual freedom and the truth.

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