Book review: Down and Out in Paris and London, by G. Orwell

Résumé du document

In the late 1920s, a young and well-educated Englishman was confronted with the hardships that a penniless existence in two European capital cities, namely Paris and London, involved. Through the account of the Englishman's life, the reader can get a quite faithful image of what it was like to be poor in a big city at that time. From popular quarrels to anecdotic talks in the bistro, from hunger and unemployment to the restlessness of the vagabond's life, from the ?tea-and-two-slices' to the ?spike' and the tramps, everything in Down and Out in Paris and London participates in a broad depiction of poverty.

Extraits

[...] The book should be particularly recommended to those interested in political and societal issues, because it is written by an educated man who has experienced misery. It dates back to the 1930s and is not Orwell's most famous book, yet it is not out-of-date as Isabelle Nikolic noticed it in the Metro of Paris anything changed ? The poor always have an air of fatigue ( Paris Tempo, 2003). Down and Out in Paris and London, Georges Orwell, Penguin Books pages, ISBN-0-14-028256-4, 6.99 . [...]

[...] Furthermore, in his most famous novels, Animal Farm and 1984, his political commitment was carried by a significant ability to foresee frightening evolutions of the modern society. He embodied the visionary writer, together with Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, 1932) for example. Committed writers play a significant social role, for they point out and try to solve political and societal issues. Hence, their fictions and essays should be read and considered in social and political sciences. Down and Out in Paris and London is easy to read and enjoyable, since it is a simple depiction of the poor' everyday life, with anecdotic stories. [...]

[...] He stands at the fringe of the society, thus he is regarded as dangerous and immoral. Actually, he used to be an ordinary man who is now prone to useless sufferings and “enforced idleness”. Blair cleverly points out the preposterous cost for society of this form of poverty; this enables him to expose straightforward solutions. For instance, he praises the transformation of the casual ward into “self-supporting institutions” where the tramps could actually settle down and grow crops to feed themselves. [...]

[...] In Down and out in Paris and London, Eric Blair goes further than the narration of his experience by developing personal thoughts about poverty. He particularly focuses on two types of poor people, in two different big cities, in order to analyse some of the various significant features of poverty. His description of the plongeur and of the tramp enables him to enlarge his views to poverty in general, and to raise potential solutions to this issue. Thus, it is worth pointing out that this book is to be regarded as a committed account, which gets, at times, the form of a socially concerned essay. [...]

[...] Book review: Down and Out in Paris and London, by G. Orwell In the late 1920s, a young and well-educated Englishman gets confronted with the hardships that a penniless existence in two European capital cities –namely Paris and London- involves. Through the account of the Englishman's life, the reader can get a quite faithful image of what it was like to be poor in a big city at that time. From popular quarrels to anecdotic talks in the bistro, from hunger and unemployment to the restlessness of the plongeur's life, from the ‘tea-and-two-slices' to the ‘spike' and the tramps, everything in Down and Out in Paris and London participate in a broad depiction of poverty. [...]