Alok Rai This essay has been extracted from a larger study in which the author has attempted to develop a critical perspective on George Orwell without getting enmeshed in the naive and dogmatic certainties of the cold tear. Given the nature of Orwell's own commitment and contribution to those certainties, this critical attempt is implicitly and sometimes explicitly, a critique of those certainties. It is also, ineluctably, an exploration of the possibilty of a politico-literary criticism.