"A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. It's in this way that all political partisans involve themselves in permitting the violence of their party. The implication of the simile is that the language that one uses in defense of genocide or specific acts of violence works to blind the audience from the reality and also to soften that reality, to make it almost gentle (like softly falling snow) and therefore acceptable. It's full of abstract and euphemistic language that describes as, "A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details" (256).
Orwell gives an example a statement in defense of Russian totalitarianism. Defences of Soviet totalitarianism as coverup for violence (simile) While Orwell doesn't refer to political partisan's as puppets, the idea becomes available by the way he describes their minds being controlled by their very use of language. Puppet imagery easily comes to mind in relation to pantomime. The political partisan who reiterates familiar or stock turns of phrase that conform to the given political party, acts as a participant in a pantomime, playing a part, fulfilling a role, again without independent thought or agency. Not unlike the above metaphor is the implicit one of political speech as pantomime. They also belong to a flock, or collective to which conformity might be expected on other levels. The implication of the comparison is that the political partisan is both obedient and unthinking.
And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity" (256). He says, "If the speech is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. Orwell draws comparisons between those who reiterate political lines and religious devotees who recite scripture. The political partisan as religious acolyte (simile) The important implication is that like alcoholism, the process is not inherent or "natural," but can be broken. The cycle of drunkenness is a metaphor for the degeneration of the English language-the alcoholism itself standing in for the process by which poor thinking leads to poor language, and so on. Buy Study Guide Alcoholism as poor English (metaphor)Įarly in the essay Orwell draws an analogy between a drunk and poor English, stating that the drunk "may take a drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks" (251).
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