Orwell's Roses

Solnit notes that Orwell often wrote about beautiful objects, including flowers. She details the multifaceted symbolism that is attached to flowers and questions the notion that “visual pleasure” (188) is their primary purpose. In addition, flowers speak to the beauty intrinsic to patterns and cycles, as in the seasonal shifts in climate. She connects this broader understanding of beauty to Orwell’s own writing in 1984. Winston Smith’s paperweight, with its flash of coral at the center, is an example of an aesthetic object, but one that carries as much moral symbolism as it does visual pleasure: “The paperweight exists in the context of the Thought Police” (190). Thus, it’s also an object of resistance, a way to challenge the authoritarian regime. This is at the crux of Orwell’s writing, for Solnit, the intersection “where aesthetic and ethical standards meet” (191). She traces this intersection in the work of other artists as well, such as visual artists working at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Solnit concludes that beauty has a purpose in questioning the status quo, in engaging in political activism.