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A review by vhindy
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
dark
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
3.75
An interesting account of Orwell’s time at the front lines in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. It’s interesting to watch him go from wide-eyed Socialist committed to the cause and willing happy to fight amongst the Communist to a more jaded version of that.
He wanted to fight against Franco and the fascists but we are soon sucked into political party infighting that started to over take all the real efforts of the war.
I can easily see how this infighting lost them the war and frankly, the people Orwell was fighting for proved themselves to be liars, manipulators of the truth, and dangerous. Willing to send men off to, as Orwell describes it, pointless deaths or imprisonments because of scrabbles between the same side.
The end of his time in Spain had him in hiding and in a state of paranoia he would be found and imprisoned. It’s a miracle that he even made it out alive between the war and injury, and his own side trying to get him,
Seems utterly miserable and also addresses the banality of being a foot soldier fighting in a trench war.
It’s worth a read but I was hoping we would get more digging into the Franco side of the war, all we get is “he’s a fascist” without adding much depth to it. I think he perfectly describes the incompetence and infighting of his own side and you slowly start to become disillusioned along with him along the way.
He wanted to fight against Franco and the fascists but we are soon sucked into political party infighting that started to over take all the real efforts of the war.
I can easily see how this infighting lost them the war and frankly, the people Orwell was fighting for proved themselves to be liars, manipulators of the truth, and dangerous. Willing to send men off to, as Orwell describes it, pointless deaths or imprisonments because of scrabbles between the same side.
The end of his time in Spain had him in hiding and in a state of paranoia he would be found and imprisoned. It’s a miracle that he even made it out alive between the war and injury, and his own side trying to get him,
Seems utterly miserable and also addresses the banality of being a foot soldier fighting in a trench war.
It’s worth a read but I was hoping we would get more digging into the Franco side of the war, all we get is “he’s a fascist” without adding much depth to it. I think he perfectly describes the incompetence and infighting of his own side and you slowly start to become disillusioned along with him along the way.