Nick's Blog

“Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous.”
Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)
(Taken from George Orwell Politics and the English Language)

As I first read this excerpt from Orwell’s essay, my sole reaction was WOW. First off, this is a very long run-on sentence. There are so many ideas within this one sentence that the writing becomes somewhat vague and produces no adequate information to support what is happening or what the writer is talking about. This type of writing appropriately justifies Joseph Williams’s statements in Style about turgid writing in the English language. In this “confusing” case, the writer uses too many phrases and too many “big” words in order to flaunt his education or disguise his lack of one.

Secondly, the writer uses a nominalization that makes his writing weak and confusing for the reader. The word “desires”, in the first line, is the subject of the sentence; however the reader has no idea who or what is being desired. In order to make this sentence more effective, the nominalization should be removed and this sentence should be made into several smaller ones.

“We desire a free, transparent personality. Our personalities maintain our consciousness and can alter the overall intensity of the conflict. However, these personalities are natural, irreducible, and, possibly, culturally dangerous.
Nick Curosh