Sound, Propaganda, and Truth in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia

Abstract From December 1936 to June 1937, George Orwell was active in the Spanish Civil War as a foreign militia volunteer. As he wrote a few years later, this experience changed his political and literary views forever. Soon after his return to England, he wrote Homage to Catalonia, in which he recounted his experience of wartime in Spain and his political views on how the Republican government repressed the social revolution led by Anarchists and dissident Marxists in Catalonia. What do aural accounts in Homage to Catalonia tell us about both the Spanish Civil War and Orwell’s political intentions as a writer? This chapter explores how Orwell used sound knowledge and active listening in his narrative as a means of building group boundaries, establishing facts, and conveying experiential truth.