Homage to Catalonia Literary Elements

Autobiography

Spain during the time of the Spanish Civil War

Orwell himself is the narrator. The book presents his point of view of the different sides involved in the Spanish Civil War, particularly his point of view regarding the Communists .

The tone is rebellious and combative.

In the book, Orwell and the Trotskyites are the protagonists, General Franco and his armies the antagonists.

The major conflict is the Spanish Civil War which is basically a conflict between the ultra left and right wings groups vying to rule the country.

Orwell and his partner are arrested and charged with Trotskyism.

Orwell's scathing condemnation of the behavior of the Communists in the Spanish Civil War foreshadows Gollancz's refusal to publish the book due to their Communist sympathies.

Orwell calls himself left leaning but this is an understatement in that he has long since been a Trotskyite and writing from a perspective of Marxism.

Orwell alludes to the political figures of the time and the way in which they made alliances that they promptly betrayed.

The imagery is all war-like. Orwell describes the chaos of the civil war so that the reader is able to visualize the pandemonium that he was living in the middle of at the time.

The war began as a basic conflict between far left and right politicians and leaders but the Communists were more assistance to Franco's fascists than their own alliance.

There is a parallel between Orwell's disillusionment with Communism and with political figures in general, and with his subsequent fictional output that was scathing of similar dictatorships, such as Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Throughout the book, groups of people are referred to in political factions rather than by using their own names: Trotskyites, for example, are named after Marxist follower Trotsky whose ideology they followed.

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