A Hanging Study Guide

Orwell was born in India in 1903, where his father worked as a British colonial official. He and his family moved back to England and he was sent to boarding school in 1911, where he was a social outcast for his relative brilliance and relative poverty. Orwell won scholarships and studied at Eton under Aldous Huxley, but instead of going to college, he decided to serve as an assistant district superintendent of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (present-day Myanmar). He learned of the cruelty of British colonial rule and moved back to Europe to become a writer. He published his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, in 1933, and his first novel, Burmese Days, in 1934. Orwell was often a political writer and his two most famous novels, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), both explore the dangers of various forms of political structures. Animal Farm is a fable based on the Russian Revolution and the following rise of Stalinism, and 1984 philosophically reflects on the dangers of totalitarianism. Orwell worked on the latter novel while battling tuberculosis, which eventually took his life. He died at only 46.

Orwell served in the Indian Imperial Police for five years, from 1922­–1927. He was part of the colonial system that kept Burma (present-day Myanmar) under British control for 62 years. Orwell’s service took place towards the end of British rule in the area, and he would have been part of a rising sentiment against global imperialism. Writing in the Modernist tradition, Orwell was concerned with exploring new (or previously taboo) topics in new ways, and much of the fiction of the time commented on the changing political landscape in and around Europe. Though Orwell wrote “A Hanging” after returning to Europe, the essay exemplifies how Modernist thinkers and writers were willing to explore the cruelty of European colonialism in ways that were more honest, reflective, and unforgiving than previous literary traditions.

Much of Orwell’s work, like “A Hanging,” was politically driven, and his two most famous novels epitomized this genre of writing during the 20th century. Animal Farm is a crushing fable, retelling the story of the Russian Revolution and explaining the mechanisms by which Stalin took power through a cast of farm animals, each of which is a metaphor for a figure or class in early 20th-century Russia. Like “A Hanging,” the novel is concerned with the ways that corruption festers within established political systems. is another political novel, but one that examines entire political thought systems rather than specific regimes. It describes the rebellion of Winston, a man who lives under Big Brother, an all-seeing and all-knowing political entity that controls memory, history, and agency. This book, too, interrogates the flaws deliberately hidden by corrupt political structures. While being a political statement piece, “A Hanging” also explores the extent of cruelty humans are capable of, especially when encouraged to conform. Similarly, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” describes a traditional and conformist community that ritualistically carries out acts of tremendous violence.