George Orwell´s Documentary Work - Focusing on
"Down and Out in Paris and London" and
"The Road to Wigan Pier" as examples

von: Birthe Stolz

4. Semester

Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Autobiographical notes on George Orwell, focusing on his social background 4

3. Orwell´s first piece of documentary work: Down and Out in Paris and London

3.1 Foregoing happenings and circumstances 5
3.2 Summary of the contents 7
3.3 Stylistic and literary devices 8
3.4 Orwell´s politics in Down and Out in Paris and London 10

4. Down among the oppressed: The Road to Wigan Pier 12

4.1 Economic and political situation in the 1930´s 12
4.2 The Left Book Club and its relation to the book 13
4.3 Summary of the contents 15
4.4 Stylistic and literary devices 16
4.5 Orwell´s politics in The Road to Wigan Pier 18
4.6 Reactions to and opinions on The Road to Wigan Pier 20

5. Conclusion 22

7. Bibliography 23

1. Introduction

In this term paper I want to focus on two of the most popular documentaries by George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier. While most people, when hearing the name George Orwell, think of the novel 1984 and the fable Animal Farm, only a few know that his first literary successes were books of a very different genre. The documentaries DOPL and RWP influenced his career as a political writer and coined him as an ambivalent left-wing intellectual. The term paper is structured chronologically, first dealing with DOPL and then focusing on RWP. In order to understand Orwell´s curiosity regarding the English working-class and the poor in general, I found it important to give a brief overview on his social background (chapter 2). I will then continue with explaining the circumstances in which Orwell found himself before going to London and Paris and describing his motives for living among the oppressed (chapter 3.1). In order to give an impression of the contents of the book, chapter 3.2 summarizes the most interesting and important passages and quotations. Chapter. 3.3 focuses on the style and the literary means. The last chapter on DOPL (chapter 3.4) refers to Orwell´s political standpoint when writing the book, including opinions and reactions to the latter. Chapter 4.1 begins with a description of the political and economic situation in the 1930´s. In my mind, it is important to get an impression of the problems and circumstances of the historical background when Orwell gathered the material for RWP because the time is closely connected with the content of the book. In the next chapter, I again will give an answer to the question why Orwell wrote this book which in this case is a little different because it was commissioned. Furthermore I will discuss the meaning and the function of the Left Book Club which played an important role in respect of RWP. Chapter 4.3 summarizes the two parts of the book while chapter 4.4. again focuses on stylistic and literary means. The importance of the political substance of RWP is mirrored in chapter 4.5, including Orwell´s aims, analysis, definition of socialism and his attacks on middle-class socialists. The last chapter of the term paper deals with the controversial opinions RWP called forth and especially with its opponents of the left-wing intelligentsia.

2. Autobiographical notes on George Orwell, focusing on his social background

George Orwell – whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair - was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal as the second of three children. His first five years he spent in India before he was sent back to school in England. Both sides of his family had been connected with the East. His paternal grandfather was an Anglican Priest in Australia and India and his maternal grandfather, a French, was a teak merchant in Burma. His father, Richard Blair, was a sub-deputy agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service, which supervised the legalized Opium trade with China. As Orwell writes in “Such, Such Were the Joys” (1947), his childhood was not entirely happy. His fifty year-old father, after sending his family back to England in 1907, stayed in India until 1912, one year after Orwell went away to preparatory school. About his mother, who was eighteen years younger than his father, Orwell later wrote: “I never felt love for any mature person, except my mother, and even her I could not trust….”1 When Orwell was a child he was not allowed to play with the plumber´s children because his parents feared that they would ruin his accent. Growing up with the wrong accent could mean loosing the advantages and privileges of his class2. After Orwell had finished the local primary school at Henley-on-Thames he won a scholarship to a mediocre preparatory school called St. Cyprian´s. Although Orwell had a middle class background (lower-upper-middle-class, as he calls it), his family was poorer than most of his public school mates who later often became the leading intellectuals of his generation.3 In school Orwell always felt guilty because he did not have enough money, and also because he wanted to have it4. After his time at St. Cyprian´s, Orwell won a scholarship for Eton where Aldous Huxley, who taught English and French, was one of Orwell´s teachers. Orwell always rejected Eton´s aristocratic values and once called his time there “five years in a lukewarm bath of snobbery”. After finishing Eton he failed to win a University scholarship and his father suggested the Burmese police instead because of the personal connections the family had. After five years of service in Burma, Orwell decided to leave in August 1927 because of his bitter hatred of imperialism5.

3. Orwell´s first piece of documentary Work: Down and Out in Paris and London

3.1 Foregoing happenings and circumstances

When Orwell came back to England, he was consumed with guilt for his time as a colonial policeman6. The fact that Orwell had spent five years in Burma had a big influence on the development of his personality7, and his opposition to imperialism had led him to associate and identify himself with the underdog and victims of society8. Orwell wanted to get away not only from imperialism but from “every form of man´s dominion over man”9 As Fernando Galván argues, “He is primarily a man of action, not of thought; he is cleary no philosopher; no politician; he follows no particular ideology. That is to say, thinking and talking are not enough for him. He needs action, to do things”. He is one of those people who can “forget the cold reasonings and act with their hearts, guided by their ideals”10.

[...]

1 Jeffrey Meyers, A Reader´s Guide to George Orwell, London: THAMES AND HUDSON 1984, 18ff.

2 Richard J. Voorhees, The Paradox of George Orwell, Lafayette, Ind.: Perdue University Studies 1971, 99

3 John Rodden, “On the Political Sociology of Intellectuals: George Orwell and the London Left Intelligentsia”, in: Graham Holderness, Bryan Loughrey and Nahem Yousaf (eds.), George Orwell. Comtemoporary Critical Essays, Basingstoke [et. al.]: MACMILLAN PRESS LTD 1998, 164

4 Meyers, (1984), 21f.

5 Meyers, (1984), 31f.

6 John Newsinger, Orwell´s Politics, Houndmills [a.o.]: PALGRAVE 2001, 20

7Alok Rai, Orwell And The Politics Of Despair. A critical study of the writings of Gerorge Orwell, Cambridge [et. al.]: Cambridge University Press 1988, 28

8 Edward M. Thomas, Orwell, Edinburgh and London: OLIVER AND BOYD LTD 1968, 20

9 Richard J. Voorhees, The Paradox of George Orwell, Lafayette, Ind.: Perdue University Studies 1971, 38

10 Fernando Galván, “The Road to Utopia, or Orwell´s Idealism”, in: Alberto Lázaro (ed.), The Road from George Orwell: His Achievement and Legacy, Bern [et. al.]: Peter Lang AG 2001, 18