Marrakech Study Guide

Eric Arthur Blair was born in India in 1903 to Ida Mabel Blair, the daughter of a Frenchman living in Burma (present-day Myanmar) and Richard Walmesley Blair, the son of an Anglican priest. Orwell’s father was a civil servant working in India, and Orwell himself worked in positions throughout the British Empire, serving as part of the Indian Imperial police. He had two sisters and moved with his mother from India to England as a child, where he lived a comfortable middle-class life, attending Eton College. After Eton, Orwell worked in Burma as part of the Imperial Police before returning to England and then moving to Paris. Moving back to England after about two years in Paris, he explored economically distressed areas in Northern England before traveling to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. Marrying Eileen O'Shaughnessy in 1937 and battling ill-health afterwards, he went to Morocco, then under French control, for about six months to recuperate. Turned down for service during World War II, Orwell published Animal Farm in 1945 and then 1984 in 1949—these were his two most famous novels. His wife Eileen died in 1945 after a hysterectomy. Facing declining health, Orwell married Sonia Brownell in 1949 before dying in 1950.

Written in 1939, in the first year of World War II, “Marrakech” references the expanding conflict in Europe. Published after his involvement in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and containing a brief mention of Hitler and his impending threats, Orwell writes in the face of increasing fascism and authoritarianism spreading across the globe. “Marrakech” appeared in New Writing, a publication opposed to fascism. Reflecting contemporary hatred for Jewish people and tying Hitler’s scapegoating and victimization of Jewish people, “Marrakech” explains the historical nature of this antisemitism, referencing the historical restrictions placed upon Jewish people by Moroccan sultans and leaders. By bringing up this history, Orwell suggests that the then-contemporary bigotry toward Jewish people in Morocco dates back centuries. Commenting on colonial efforts in Africa, Orwell’s work also handles the effects of European imperialism in Morocco and the rest of Africa. The result of the “Great Scramble for Africa,” which began in earnest following the Berlin Conference in 1884, the French presence in Morocco can be seen in the essay in the fact that the worker Orwell interacts with speaks French at the public. The French colonial presence in Africa is also made evident in the essay by the Senegalese soldier, who Orwell notes is technically a French citizen because of France’s colonial rule of Senegal. 

Orwell wrote prolifically, and he often centered criticism of empire, colonialism, and fascism in his writing. His first novel, Burmese Days, offers a fictionalized account of life in the British Raj, the period of British rule over India, which ended officially in 1947. Critical of empire, this novel influenced later essays that interrogate the value of European imperialism and colonialism, such as “Shooting the Elephant” and “Marrakech.” Influenced by Jack London’s The People of the Abyss Orwell followed his example, highlighting the poor and destitute with first-person observations. Rudyard Kipling’s works supporting imperialism were both a source of criticism for Orwell and an influence for pieces like “Marrakech.” Working as a reviewer, Orwell commented the way he was impacted by authors such as Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, W. Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, and especially Charles Dickens. Orwell’s description of Dickens—as a reformer and an author unafraid to critique popular opinion—seems to mirror the kind of writer Orwell himself eventually became.