Over one hundred years ago, an English visionary was born in India. On June 25th, 1903 Eric Arthur Blair was born to Richard and Ida Mabel Blair. Eric would grow up to take the pen name George Orwell, and he would go on to write many essays and novels, of which the most famous are Nineteen Eighty-Four, a stark and dystopian view of the future, and Animal Farm, a brilliant vilification of totalitarianism and communism. Orwell was born in the Indian village of Motihari, which lies near the border of Nepal. At that time India was a part of the British Empire, and Orwell's father held a post as an agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. The Blair's enjoyed a fairly privileged life in colonial India; however, they did not own property or have extensive investment holdings. Eric, his mother, and his older sister Marjorie returned to Henley, England around 1907, where Eric would attend private preparatory school. By the age of thirteen, Eric would win a scholarship to Wellington School, and a short time later he would win a scholarship to the famed Eton School. By his own account, Eric knew he was destined to be a writer, which caused him to not be overly interested in other fields of study. In his 1947 essay Why I Write Orwell writes in the first paragraph;
             From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I
             grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I
             was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle
             Eric would go on to graduate from Eton, and with a fairly high class ranking. Eric knew then the academic life of Oxford or Cambridge was not for him, instead opting to join the Indian Imperial Police in 1922. The young Eric Blair began his pursuit of action and adventure then, and his experiences would shape his work in the future. In the case of Georg...