“Why I write” by George Orwell: An academic text

Sometimes we think about academic texts as something scientific and hard to understand made by old men in labs. It may be believed that these texts are just related to numbers (math) or chemicals (chemistry). But for me, it goes beyond and, also experiences and opinions may be taken into account when talking about them.

Some of you in classroom said this text was just a biography “literary writing”. In opposition to that point of view I believe is an essay; it doesn’t matter he is taking into account his personal life, because he is talking about real factors which have influenced his life and, maybe the one of some others writers and people. The text shows the structure of an essay. In the first paragraph he introduces the topic “the reasons why he had to write books since he was a child”. Then in the next paragraphs, he gives us all his arguments trying to defend the fact why “he writes”. He presents his point: the reasons or motives why a writer can write, and also how society and the historical events may affect the way how they do it. Finally, in the last paragraph, he concludes that he doesn’t know what his strongest motives are, but he does know which of them deserve to be followed. With this structure he can make an analysis of his work as a writer; taking positive or negative aspects, causes and effects.

Another reason to think this is an academic text is that he purposes four great motives for writing, in that part he is not talking just about his life, he is describing some general motives to describe why people write in our world.

As a conclusion, we have to think academic texts as a way to express opinions, experiences and facts: convincing some other people or, sharing information that may be considered as valuable. For me this text is very interesting and worthy for literary world. It should be taken for us as a tool to make a self analysis of our motives to write, maybe we don’t have them or, just we haven’t thought about them.