Orwell's Roses

Solnit begins this section with a stroll around Wallington, reflecting on what Orwell himself might have seen. She self-consciously mimics Orwell’s own preoccupations with nature and its pleasures: “There was no one else on the route on that Thursday of scattered white clouds and sunshine, and so I fell into a happy introspective trance, taking in the details of the path, the fields, the sky” (123). She contemplates the origin of the flint upon which she treads as well: “They constituted a dictionary of flint possibilities and I was picking up a vocabulary of form from it” (124). Her way with metaphor—a flint dictionary from which she learns words in physical form—often originates in nature. This kind of language undergirds her larger project of portraying Orwell as a writer steeped in the natural world and concerned with the truth of what language conveys, and it underscores one of her book’s main themes: The Roots of Writing. This opening trope of the lonely traveler, communing with nature and taking the long view of history, starkly contrasts with some of the material in this part of the book—Stalin’s impatience with natural forces; his denial of truth and science; and the sway of his authoritarian regime, within and beyond the Soviet Union.

Orwell’s writing, particularly in the novel 1984, reflects Stalin’s regime of deception and atrocity. For example, when Winston Smith is tortured in the penultimate parts of Orwell’s novel, he’s repeatedly asked to confirm—as evidence of his acquiescence to the authorities—that “two plus two equals five” (138). This, Solnit tells her reader, was “a real formula, a proposition to carry out the Soviet five-year plan in four years” (138). Hence, Stalin put his faith in Lysenko’s spurious claims to propagate heartier wheat in a single season. It’s also evidence of the wobbly foundation upon which the regime rested—of being forced into denying the reality one sees or knows is true: “Perhaps it was an indoctrination in overriding one’s intelligence, and certainly lies were the one crop with a bumper yield year after year” (138). Solnit holds Orwell up, in contrast, as a beacon of truth, perhaps unique among his generation, many of whom were willingly fooled by Stalin’s propaganda. Instead, she argues, “Orwell would convey more powerfully than almost anyone before or since [that] one of the powers tyrants hold is to destroy and distort the truth and force others to submit to what they know is untrue” (139). Thus, Orwell stands out in comparison to such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw, whom Solnit mentions, in defying the Soviet’s distorted version of events.

Part 4 employs the same kind of juxtapositions as the other parts: It opens with “a dictator plant[ing] lemons” (121) rather than a writer planting roses. Ten years after Orwell planted his roses, Stalin ordered lemon trees to be planted, regardless of their suitability to the climate. Orwell’s roses still thrive, representing a commitment to beauty—a beauty bound to the laws of nature, the truth of science—while Stalin’s lemon trees, transplanted follies, are long dead. The title of Chapter 3, “Forcing Lemons,” is itself a metaphor for totalitarian control—and, ultimately, reveals its inherent weakness: the belief that control over organic processes—which, symbolically speaking, include freedom of expression and movement as well as the creation of beauty and the experience of joy—is possible. The connotation of lemons as something not well-built and inherently bound to fail adds another layer of meaning to the chapter’s title. Stalin’s lemon trees failed; it was inevitable that they would. Conversely, “the wheat fields around Wallington were reminders that even seeds for annuals or practices like farming could outlast a regime, a dictator, a pack of lies, and a war against science” (146). The flint path endures, while Stalin’s empire crumbled, just as his lemon trees died; the endeavor is unsustainable in an environment of lies, in a climate of cold.