John Rossi compares George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway, noting the similarity of their styles and differences in career and influence.
Although made famous by his two political allegories, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s mastery of English prose shows best in his essays. In “A Hanging,” and “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell produced little morality tales filled with vivid concrete images. . . . However, it was through his essays and his political journalism that Orwell left his most lasting mark. “Politics and the English Language” became a kind of Bible for a generation of political writers, with its simple rules for good writing.
Hemingway is largely unread today except for short stories, and he is easy to parody. In fact, in some ways he was parodying himself after World War II. His novel Across the River and Into the Trees—E.B. White spoofed it with “Across the Street and Into the Grill”—is an example of the worst excesses of Hemingway’s prose.
I remember thinking, as a young man, that my prose style was sparse like Hemingway’s, but it’s closer to the truth that my style is sparse as in lack of effort. And lest I slip into musing over my failures, let me ask what you’re read of Hemingway and Orwell. I remember reading a Hemingway’s short story in college and getting a lower grade on the analysis than I expected. I felt I had too little to go on to judge the meaning of the story. Still bitter about it.
I don’t think I’ve read anything by quotes by Orwell, though I may have seen an adaptation of Animal Farm.
