RACHEL A.G. REYES
IN the 1930s, George Orwell attempted to understand the working classes both in his native England and abroad. Raised and educated in an upper-class milieu, Orwell was conditioned to treat the poor with condescension and suspicion. The notes and observations he amassed of his time with laborers and proletarian families reveal the loathing he sometimes felt for them—he was repulsed by their smell and dirt and despised their intellectual limitations, yet he strived to educate and rid himself of these prejudices.