Literature
Down and Out in Paris and London
"Down and Out in Paris and London" is a semi-autobiographical work by George Orwell that chronicles his experiences living in poverty in both cities. The book explores themes of social inequality, the struggles of the working class, and the dehumanizing effects of poverty. Through vivid descriptions and personal anecdotes, Orwell offers a powerful critique of the societal structures that perpetuate poverty and marginalization.
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6 Key excerpts on "Down and Out in Paris and London"
eBook - PDFOrwell in Context
Communities, Myths, Values
- B. Clarke(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
In the introduction to the 1989 Penguin edition, for example, Dervla Murphy argues that Most writers who share for a time in the lives of the poor are not genuinely down and out, though they may choose to appear so to their new neighbours. What gives the Paris chapters of Down and Out such pungent immediacy is the fact that Orwell was not then ‘playing a game’. 79 Dan Jacobson also distinguishes Orwell from the ‘slummer’, whom he describes as ‘one who makes day-trips into the lower depths, and then hastens back, positively refreshed by what he has seen, into the security and comfort of the middle classes’, 80 whilst Malcolm Bradbury insists that Orwell ‘had known poverty and pain’. 81 These interpreta- tions distinguish the text from the work of other social explorers who simply ‘appear’ to be poor. There are several problems with this reading. Down and Out in Paris and London is not, of course, a simple transcription of Orwell’s experience but instead a literary representation of it. It is neither ‘innocent’ nor Class 25 unmediated. Indeed, it illustrates Janet Montefiore’s argument that the ‘brilliant rhetoric of authenticity’ used by thirties works of ‘Eyewitness history’ is often, if not invariably, ‘the product of deliberate and skilful construction’. 82 Even the identification of the narrator with Orwell himself is problematic as it obscures the text’s rhetorical strategies. As George Woodcock argued, the ‘I’ in Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier is no more and no less George Orwell than the Marcel of A la recherche du temps perdu is Marcel Proust, and the autobiographical form of his works can be deceptive, if it is taken too literally, for Orwell rarely tells of his own experiences except to make a point illustrating some general argument, usually of a political or social nature.
eBook - PDF- J. Newsinger(Author)
- 1999(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Poverty was not just a particular level of income or lack of it, but a way of life, a condition of existence, for hundreds of thousands of people, and Orwell was determined to acquire at least some understanding of the way they lived. Of course, this was the result of his expeditions among the ‘down and out’, expeditions from which he always knew he could return to comparative comfort, but nevertheless it gave him a sympathy with and understanding of the casual, unskilled working class that was unique among middle-class writers. From this point of view, his determination to get ‘down among the oppressed’ was triumphantly vindicated. In the first part of Down and Out , Orwell describes how he came to receive his ‘object-lesson in poverty’ in the Coq d’Or quarter of Paris, reduced to living on six francs a day, ‘not actual poverty...on the fringe of it’. First there is the shame of it and the embarrassing attempts to hide your situation from others. He writes of ‘the secrecy attaching to pov- erty’ and of how it ‘tangles you in a net of lies’ as you try to tell the tobac- conist why you have cut down on your smoking. He provides a litany of the petty humiliations and indignities that poverty brings, the way that it affects social interaction and turns minor setbacks into disasters. There are ‘the times when you have nothing to do and being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing.... You discover that a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs.’ And yet he admits there are thousands of people in Paris living this life, permanently inhabiting what he calls ‘the suburbs...of poverty’. His situation worsened and there were two-and-a-half days when he had no money for any food at all. He provides a graphic account of the effects of hunger, from how it made him feel down to the effect it had on his spit.
eBook - PDFGeorge Orwell Now!
Preface by Richard Blair, Son of George Orwell
- Richard Lance Keeble, Lee B. Becker(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
1 It (banally enough) suggests that it deals with the experience of being down and out in two cities, and that such differences as one may expect to find in these experiences will lie in what differs between the French capital and the English. This is not the case. Orwell’s experiences in Paris are methodologically quite distinct from those in London. This can be seen emblematically in the use of the two cities’ names in the title, even though only one of them is the sole site of his (assumed) poverty in the country in question. Orwell is certainly down and out in Paris, but it would be more precise, although undoubtedly less euphonious to speak of ‘London and sur- rounding areas.’ In France, Orwell remains within the city; in England, he travels from casual ward to casual ward. This is not just a reflection of the fact that Orwell investigated more than one type of poverty, and that the casual ward system nec- essarily implied a wandering status that was absent from the hand-to-mouth but nonetheless working world of plongeurs and others in Paris. Living and working in a place on the one hand, and living the wandering life of the homeless on the other are two quite different methodologies in what will here be called incognito social investigation. 2 By this is meant the collection of information on a social group considered ‘lower’ by an observer from a ‘higher’ group when the observer endeavors to pass for a member of the group under observation. There are various types Trust THE Teller AND NOT THE Tale Reflections on Orwell’s Hidden Rhetoric of Truthfulness in the London Section of Down and Out in Paris and London LUKE SEABER C H A P T E R S I X
eBook - PDF- Michael G. Brennan(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
10 In this respect, Down and Out remains a problematic and distasteful text for modern readers, unlike other well-known novels of the period, such as Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock (1938), from which comparable anti-Semitic sentiments and descriptions in the first edition were silently expurgated in later printings. 11 It is also significant that Down and Out was published by Victor Gollancz, who had been born an orthodox Jew but later described himself as a Christian socialist. He insisted on various revisions to the typescript, mainly to obscene language and some identifiable names, but there is no record of him commenting on Orwell’s depiction of Jewish characters at Paris. In contrast, aspects of institutional Christianity are more gently mocked in the Paris section of Down and Out . Casual oaths, such as ‘ Sacrée salope ’ (I.1) and ‘ Nom de Dieu ’ (I.25), inevitably lace the conversations of the lower classes, in a similar vein to the meaningless blasphemies of the petty criminals in ‘Clink’. Orwell carefully stage-manages the comic tale of the waiter Valenti, whose lack of money leaves him starving for five days. In desperation, he prays to Sainte Éloise, the patron saint of the quarter, whose picture hangs on the wall of his boarding house room. Almost immediately, a kindly neighbour notices that he has an empty oil bidon for which he can claim a returnable three francs fifty deposit. Delighted, Valenti is about to give thanks for this saintly intecession when he discovers that the portrait is really of a renowned Empire prostitute, Suzannah May. Generally, however, Christianity plays little part in Orwell’s experiences as a Parisian hotel plongeur since long hours of work and little money leave little oppor-tunity for experiences beyond his room or local taverns. Once he returns to London, however, Orwell exposes the diversity of well-meaning but generally unwelcome Christian support systems for the poor and destitute of the capital.
eBook - PDFIncognito Social Investigation in British Literature
Certainties in Degradation
- Luke Seaber(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
The title of Orwell’s first book is misleading. Banally enough, it sug- gests that it deals with the experience of being down and out in two cities; such differences as one may expect to find will lie in the differences between French and English cities. This is not the case: Orwell’s experi- ences in Paris are methodologically quite distinct from those in London. This can be seen emblematically in the use of the two cities’ names in the title, even though only one of them is the sole site of his poverty in the country in question. Orwell is certainly down and out in Paris, but it would be more precise, although less euphonious, to speak of ‘London and surrounding areas’. In France, he stays within the city; in England, he travels from casual ward to casual ward. This is more than just a reflection of the fact that Orwell investigated more than one type of poverty. Living and working in a place on the one hand and living the wandering life of the homeless on the other are two quite different methodologies in incognito social investigation: the latter is the Greenwoodian type, and it is that which we shall analyse here. We should note here that it is not the presence or absence of movement per se that changes the methodology. Greenwood did not move about to research the piece that founded the genre; nor did many of the other early incognito social investigators feel DOWN AND OUT: GEORGE ORWELL AND THE DEATH OF A GENRE 63 the need to sample more than one casual ward. Equally, not all those who have wandered in assumed poverty have therefore been following the Greenwoodian tradition. Indeed, as Chapter 3 argues, ‘tramping’ is a form of incognito social investigation with its own history and rules. The identifying factor of incognito social investigation in the Greenwoodian tradition is, rather, its focus on the homeless. However, ‘homeless’ here should not be given the connotations it currently holds.
eBook - PDF- Craig L. Carr(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
Later in the text of Nineteen Eighty-Four , O’Brien puts the matter to rest. Noting that Winston knew better than to put his faith in the proles, he says, The Price of Poverty 39 “The proletarians will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million. They cannot. I do not have to tell you the reason; you know it already” (Ibid.: 216). The confrontation between Winston and O’Brien in the Ministry of Love can profitably be read as a discussion Orwell was having with himself, a discussion between his more reflective self and his more emotional side, with Winston representing the latter and O’Brien the for-mer. The discussion has a clear winner, as is symbolized by O’Brien’s victory over Winston. Orwell seems, at this point, to scold himself for previously placing a degree of faith in the proles; he knows he should have known better. This depressing conclusion is foreshadowed in Orwell’s earlier writ-ings on poverty, and an examination of Orwell’s critique of the effects of poverty on those who suffer from it should help make this clear. 1 Orwell set out to learn about poverty upon his return from Burma and soon found himself walking with the tramps of London. Next he headed for Paris, presumably with the intention of launching upon a literary career. Whether or not he intended to find a subject to write about by going Down and Out in Paris and London is neither here nor there, but in the fashion typical of the moralist, his outrage at the plight of the poor quickly pro-vided him with a literary purpose (Cf. Crick, 1980: 109–13). The result was a moving tale about his various experiences with poverty: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). This was followed shortly thereafter by a loosely biographical novel about the troubles faced by an aspiring writer who struggles because of his impoverished way of life, entitled Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). Just as the novel was finished, Orwell got another opportunity to study poverty, this time from a bit of a distance.
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