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Eastern Europe, and of those who led it. It will, one day, give him the same eminence in China and
North Korea.
Having been among the bullies and among the bullied at different times of his life, Orwell had an
innate understanding of what Nietzsche called the "master-slave" relationship. He knew that there are
guilty thrills to be obtained from domination, and he also realised what few people fully appreciate—
that there are also guilty thrills to be had from subjecting and abasing oneself. These books can be
read, independently of their time and place, as a strong preventive medicine against the mentality of
servility, and especially against the lethal temptation to exchange freedom for security: a bargain that
invariably ends up with the surrender of both.
I have dwelt somewhat on the circumstances in which these works were written and published,
because they illustrate another point. It took courage, physical and moral, to write these books and to
fight for their right to be read. Orwell's life was a struggle in which the distance between what he
said and what he meant was as near to nil as made no difference. He was a participant as well as a
witness. He suffered a good deal in making the discovery, but he has assisted us in realising that,
while the drive to power and corruption and cruelty is certainly latent in human beings, the instinct for
liberty is innate as well. This battle takes place within ourselves as well as in the world we inhabit,
and these books are weapons of self-respect as well as of self-defense.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Washington, D.C.
January 20, 2003