george orwell coming up for air

The themes of George Orwell Coming Up for Air are nostalgia, the folly of trying to go back and recapture past glories and the easy way the dreams and aspirations of one’s youth can be smothered by the humdrum routine of work, marriage and getting old. It is written in the first person, with George Bowling, the forty-five-year-old protagonist, who reveals his life and experiences while undertaking a trip back to his boyhood home as an adult.

At the opening of the book, Bowling has a day off work to go to London to collect a new set of false teeth. A news-poster about the contemporary King Zog of Albania sets off thoughts of a biblical character Og, King of Bashan that he recalls from Sunday church as a child. Along with ‘some sound in the traffic or the smell of horse dung or something’ these thoughts trigger Bowling’s memory of his childhood as the son of an unambitious seed merchant in “Lower Binfield” near the River Thames. Bowling relates his life history, dwelling on how a lucky break during the First World War landed him in a comfortable job away from any action and provided contacts that helped him become a successful salesman.

As George Orwell Coming Up for Air continues, Bowling is wondering what to do with a small sum of money that he has won on a horserace and which he has concealed from his wife and family. He and his wife attend a Left Book Club meeting where he is horrified by the hate shown by the anti-fascist speaker, and bemused by the Marxist ramblings of the communists who have attended the meeting. Fed up with this, he seeks his friend Old Porteous, the retired schoolmaster. He usually finds Porteous entertaining, but on this occasion his dry dead classics makes Bowling even more depressed.

Bowling decides to use the money on a ‘trip down memory lane’, to revisit the places of his childhood. He recalls a particular pond with huge fish in it which he had missed the chance to try and catch thirty years previously. He therefore plans to return to Lower Binfield but when he arrives, he finds the place unrecognisable. Eventually he locates the old pub where he is to stay, finding it much changed. His home has become a tea shop. Only the church and vicar appear the same, but he has a shock when he discovers an old girlfriend; In his eyes, she has been so ravaged by time, she is almost unrecognizable and is utterly voided of the qualities he once adored. She fails to recognize him at all. Bowling spends a good deal of time remembering the slow and painful decline of his fathers seed business – resulting from the nearby establishment of corporate competition. This painful memory seems to have sensitized him to – and given him a repugnance for; what he sees as the marching ravages of “Progress”. The final disappointment is to find that the estate where he used to fish has been built over, and the secluded and once hidden pond that contained the huge Carp he always intended to take on with his fishing rod, but never got around to, has become a rubbish dump. The social and material changes experienced by Bowling since childhood make his past seem distant. The concept of “you can’t go home again” hangs heavily over Bowling’s journey, as he realizes that many of his old haunts are gone or considerably changed from his younger years.

Throughout the adventure he receives reminders of impending war, and the threat of bombs becomes real when one lands accidentally on the town. Coming Up For Air will keep you hooked and is a hidden gem among George Orwell Books.

george orwell clergymans daughter

George Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter follows a day in the life of Dorothy Hare, the weak-willed daughter of a disagreeable widowed clergyman. Her father is Rector of Knype Hill, a small provincial East Anglian town. She keeps house for him, fends off the trade creditors, visits parishioners and makes costumes for fund-raising events. All the time she practises self-mortification in order to be true to her faith. In the evening she is invited to dinner by Mr Warburton, Knype Hill’s most disreputable resident, a middle-aged bachelor and an unashamed lecher and atheist. He attempts to seduce Dorothy, as he has done before more than once. As she leaves he forces another embrace on her, and they are seen by Mrs Semprill, the village gossip and scandal-monger. Dorothy returns home to her conservatory late at night to work on the costumes.

Dorothy is transposed to the Old Kent Road with amnesia. Eight days of her life are unaccounted for. She falls in with Nobby and his friends, who relieve her of her remaining half-crown and take her with them on a hop-picking expedition in Kent. Meanwhile the rumour has arisen that she has eloped with Mr Warbuton, and the story makes the national press for a few weeks. After hard work in the hop fields she returns to London with her small earnings. As a single girl with no luggage she is refused admission at “respectable” hotels and ends up in a cheap hotel for “working-girls”. When her money runs out she leaves to live on the streets.

Dorothy spends the night sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square (in a chapter presented entirely as dramatic dialogue). She is arrested for vagrancy and ends up in a police cell.

Dorothy’s father, who has ignored her letters for help, contacts his cousin Sir Thomas Hare in London, whose servant finds her as she is leaving the police station. She is found a job as a schoolteacher in a small private girls’ “academy” run by the grasping Mrs Creevy. Her attempts to introduce more liberal education clash with the expectations of the parents and the work which she had enjoyed becomes a drudgery. Meanwhile she endures Mrs Creevy’s pettiness until Mrs Creevy turns her out without notice because she has found another teacher.

Shortly after Dorothy steps out of the door of the school, Mr Warburton turns up in a taxi to say that Mrs Semprill has been charged with libel and she and her malicious gossip are discredited. He has therefore come to take her back to Knype Hill. While bringing her home, Warburton proposes marriage and Dorothy rejects him. She recognises but ignores his arguments that with her religious faith lost, her existence as a hard-working clergyman’s daughter will be rendered meaningless and that marriage, while she is still young, is the only escape from a life of hardship, loneliness and poverty.

The story ends with Dorothy back in her old routine, with the exception that having lost her faith she no longer indulges in self-mortification.

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george orwell burmese days

George Orwell Burmese Days is set in 1920s imperial Burma, in the fictional district of Kyauktada. As the story opens, U Po Kyin, a corrupt Burmese magistrate is planning to destroy the reputation of the Indian doctor – Dr. Veraswami. The Doctor’s main protection is his friendship with James Flory who, as a pukka sahib (European white man), has higher prestige. U Po Kyin begins his campaign by sending anonymous letters with false stories about the doctor, and he even sends a subtly threatening letter to Flory.

Flory has become disillusioned with his lifestyle, living in a tiresome expatriate community centred round the European Club in a remote part of the country. On the other hand he has become so embedded in Burma that it is impossible for him to leave and return to England. His dilemma seems to be answered when Elizabeth Lackersteen, the orphaned niece of Mr Lackersteen, the local timber firm manager, arrives. Flory saves her when she thinks she is being attacked by a small water buffalo. He is immediately taken with her and they spend some time getting close, culminating in a highly successful shooting expedition. Elizabeth scores a hit with almost her first shot, and Flory shoots a leopard, promising the skin to Elizabeth as a trophy. It seems a match made in heaven. Under the surface, however, Elizabeth is appalled by Flory’s relatively egalitarian attitude towards the natives, seeing them as ‘beastly’ while Flory extolls the virtues of their rich culture. Worse still are his interests in high art and literature which remind Elizabeth of her boondoggling mother who died in disgrace in Paris, poisoned by her painting materials whilst masquerading as a bohemian artist. Despite these reservations, of which Flory is entirely unaware, she is willing to marry him to escape poverty, spinsterhood and the unwelcome advances of her perpetually inebriated uncle .

Flory is about to ask her to marry him, when they are interrupted firstly by her aunt and secondly by an earthquake. Mrs. Lackersteen’s interruption is deliberate because she has discovered that a military police lieutenant named Verrall is arriving in Kyauktada. As he comes from an extremely good family, she sees him as a better prospect as a husband for Elizabeth. Mrs. Lackersteen tells Elizabeth that Flory is keeping a Burmese mistress as a deliberate ploy to send her to Verrall. Indeed, he had been keeping one but had dismissed her almost the moment Elizabeth had arrived. No matter, Elizabeth is appalled and falls at the first opportunity for Verrall, who is arrogant and ill-mannered to all but her. Flory is devastated and after a period of exile attempts to make amends by delivering to her the leopard skin but an inexpert curing process has left the skin mangy and stinking and the gesture merely compounds his status as a poor suitor.

U Po Kyin’s campaign against Dr. Veraswami turns out to be intended simply to further his aim of becoming a member of the European Club in Kyauktada. The club has been put under pressure to elect a native member and Dr. Veraswami is the most likely candidate. U Po Kyin arranges the escape of a prisoner and plans a rebellion for which he intends that Dr. Veraswami should get the blame. The rebellion begins and is quickly put down, but a native rebel is killed by acting Divisional Forest Officer, Maxwell. A few days later, the body of Maxwell is brought back to the town. This creates a tension between the Burmese and the Europeans, exacerbated by a vicious attack on native children by the spiteful Ellis. A large riot begins and Flory becomes the hero for bringing it under control with some support by Dr. Veraswami. U Po Kyin tries to claim credit but is disbelieved and Dr. Veraswami’s prestige is restored.

Verrall leaves Kyauktada without even saying goodbye to Elizabeth and she falls for Flory again. Flory is happy and plans to marry Elizabeth. However, U Po Kyin has not given up; he hires Flory’s former Burmese mistress to create a scene in front of Elizabeth during the sermon at Sunday church. Flory is disgraced and Elizabeth refuses to have anything more to do with him. Overcome by the loss and seeing no future for himself, Flory commits suicide.

Dr. Veraswami is demoted and sent to a different district and U Po Kyin is elected to the Club. U Po Kyin’s plans have succeeded and he plans to redeem his life and cleanse his sins by financing pagodas. He dies of apoplexy before he can even start on building the first pagoda and his servant envisages him returning to life as a frog or rat. Elizabeth eventually marries Macgregor, the Deputy Commissioner and lives happily in contempt of the natives, who in turn live in fear of her.

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keep the aspidistra flying

George Orwell Keep the Aspidistra Flying starts as Gordon Comstock has ‘declared war’ on what he sees as an ‘overarching dependence’ on money by leaving a promising job as a copywriter for an advertising company called ‘New Albion’—at which he shows great dexterity—and taking a low-paying job instead, ostensibly so he can write poetry. Coming from a respectable family background in which the inherited wealth has now become dissipated, Gordon resents having to work for a living. The ‘war’ (and the poetry), however, aren’t going particularly well and, under the stress of his ‘self-imposed exile’ from affluence, Gordon has become absurd, petty and deeply neurotic.

Comstock lives in a bedsit in London, earning enough to live without any luxuries in a small bookshop owned by a Scot, McKechnie. He works intermittently at a magnum opus he plans to call London Pleasures; meanwhile, his only published work, a slim volume of poetry entitled Mice, collects dust on the remainder shelf. He is simultaneously content with his meagre existence and also disdainful of it. He lives without financial ambition and the need for a ‘good job,’ but his living conditions are uncomfortable, his job is boring, and his impecuniousness is a frequent source of humiliation for him.

Comstock is ‘obsessed’ by what he sees as a pervasion of money (the ‘Money God’, as he calls it) behind social relationships, feeling sure that women would find him more attractive if he were better off. At the beginning of the novel, he senses that his girlfriend Rosemary (whom he met at the Albion, and who continues to work there), is dissatisfied with him because of his poverty. Throughout the novel, Comstock oscillates between self-admiration and self-loathing—one moment filled with disdain for the capitalist vulgarities he sees around him, the next writhing with shame over some imagined slight. An example of his financial embarrassment is when he is desperate for a pint of beer at his local pub, but has run out of pocket money and is ashamed to cadge a drink off his fellow lodger Flaxman.

One of Comstock’s last remaining friends, Philip Ravelston, a Marxist who publishes a magazine called Antichrist, agrees with Comstock in principle, but is comfortably well-off himself and this causes strains when the practical miseries of Comstock’s life become apparent. He does, however, endeavour to publish some of Comstock’s work and his efforts had resulted in Mice being published via one of his publisher contacts (unbeknownst to Comstock).

Gordon and Rosemary have little time together—she works late and his landlady forbids female visitors to her tenants. Rosemary won’t have sex with him but he persuades her to spend a day with him in the country near Burnham Beeches where he hopes to break her resolve. However, what is intended to be a pleasant day out away from London’s grime turns into a disaster when they cannot find a pub open and are forced to eat an unappetizing lunch at a fancy, overpriced hotel instead. Gordon has to pay the bill with all the money he had set aside for their jaunt and worries about having to borrow money from Rosemary. At the critical moment when he is about to take her virginity, she raises the issue of contraception and his interest flags because he could not afford such things—money again.

Having sent a poem to an American publication, Gordon suddenly receives from them a cheque worth ten pounds—a considerable sum for him at the time. He intends to set aside half for his sister Julia, who has always been there to lend him money and support. He treats Rosemary and Ravelston to dinner, which begins well, but the evening deteriorates as it proceeds. Gordon, drunk, tries to force himself upon Rosemary but she angrily rebukes him and leaves. Gordon continues drinking, drags Ravelston with him to visit a pair of prostitutes, and ends up broke and in a police cell the next morning. He is guilt-ridden over the thought of being unable to pay his sister back the money because one of the tarts stole his £5 note.

Ravelston pays Gordon’s fine after a brief appearance before the magistrate, but a reporter hears about the case, and writes about it in the local paper. The ensuing publicity results in Gordon losing his job at the bookshop, and, consequently, his relatively ‘comfortable’ lifestyle. As Gordon searches for another job, his life deteriorates, and his poetry stagnates. After living with his friend Ravelston and his girlfriend Hermione during his time of unemployment, Gordon ends up working at another book shop and cheap twopenny lending library owned by the sinister Mr. Cheeseman for an even smaller wage of 30 shillings a week. This was 10 shillings less than he was earning before because he had been sacked on account of his drunken escapade. Determined to sink to the lowest level of society in a world without money or moral obligation, Gordon takes a run-down room in a dire Lambeth slum.

Rosemary, having avoided Gordon for some time, suddenly comes to visit him one day at his dismal lodgings. Despite his terrible poverty and shabbiness, they make love but it is without any emotion or passion. Later, Rosemary drops in one day unexpectedly at the library, having not been in touch with Gordon for some time, and tells him that she is pregnant. Gordon is presented with the choice between leaving Rosemary to a life of social shame at the hands of her family—since both of them reject the idea of an abortion—or marrying her and returning to a life of respectability by taking back the job he once so deplored at the New Albion with its £4 salary.

He chooses Rosemary and respectability and then experiences a feeling of relief at having abandoned his anti-money principles with such comparative ease. After two years of abject failure and poverty, he throws his poetic work ‘London Pleasures’ down a drain, marries Rosemary, and resumes his advertising career, happily plunging into a campaign to promote a new product to prevent foot odour. In his various lodgings, Gordon has always had to share his room with aspidistras which continue to thrive despite his mistreatment of them. In his lonely walks around mean streets, aspidistras seem to appear in every lower-middle class window. As the book closes, Gordon wins an argument with Rosemary to install an aspidistra in their new small but comfortable flat on London’s Edgware Road.

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Old Major, a prize-winning boar, assembles the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the big barn. He recites a vision-like dream he has had in which the farm animals live happily with no the humans to abuse them. He convinces the animals that they must act toward such a paradise and teaches them a song called “Beasts of England,” in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals embrace Major’s vision with great enthusiasm. When he dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs—Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer — formulate his main principles into a school of thought called Animalism. Late one night, the animals manage to overcome the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property Animal Farm and commit themselves to achieving Major’s ambition. The cart-horse Boxer commits himself to the cause with particular zeal, committing his great strength to the success of the farm and adopting as a personalized maxim the assertion “I will work harder.”

Animal Farm runs smoothly for a while, with everyone operating together towards a better future. Napolean begins to educate a group of puppies about the principles of Animalism, and Snowball teaches the other animals how to read. One day Mr. Jones comes back to the farm. He tries to battle the animals and take the farm back, but he is once again got the better of in what soon becomes known as the Battle of the Cowshed. The animals, ecstatic with their triumph, claim Mr. Jones’ abandoned gun as a token of their victory.. As time goes on, however, Napoleon and Snowball increasingly bicker over the future of the farm, and they begin to fight with each other for power and influence among the other animals. Snowball has an idea to get free electricity for the farm by constructing a windmill, but Napolean dismisses him and is definitely against the idea. At the meeting to decide on whether to take up the project, Snowball gives a impassioned speech. Although Napoleon gives only a brief retort, he then makes a funny sound, and nine attack dogs—the puppies that Napoleon had taken in order to “educate”—burst into the barn and chase Snowball from the farm. Napoleon assumes leadership of Animal Farm and announces that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make all of the decisions—for the good of every animal.

With Snowball gone away Napolean does a complete 180 concerning the windmill idea. Soon he has all the other animals working diligently away on the labor and, of course, Boxer attacks it with his accustomed enthusiasm. After a storm, the animals come outside to see the windmill has been wrecked. Napolean blames Snowball, saying that he must have sneaked in to sabotage it. He orchestrates a great purge, during which various animals who have allegedly been involved in Snowball’s great conspiracy—meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon’s uncontested rule — meet immediate death at the teeth of the attack dogs. Napolean begins to enlarge his power, feeling as though any animal who may have been a threat to him has been eliminated. Boxer takes on a new slogan, reading “Napolean is always right.”. Napoleon also begins to act more and more like a human being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in business with other local farmers. The traditional Animalist precepts rigorously prohibited such actions, but Squealer, Napoleon’s propagandist, rationalizes every action to the other animals, telling them that Napoleon is a exceptional leader and is making things easier for everyone — despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and overworked.

Mr. Frederick, a nearby farmer, cheats Napoleon in the exchange of some lumber and then assails the farm and dynamites the windmill, which had been reconstructed at great expense. After the destruction of the windmill, a sensational fight ensues, during which Boxer acquires major wounds. The animals rout out the farmers, but Boxer’s wounds weaken him. When he later falls while working on the windmill, he feels that his time has nearly come. One day, Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to Squealer, Boxer has died in peace after having been took to the hospital, praising the Rebellion with his last breath. In actuality, Napoleon has sold-out his most loyal and long-suffering worker to a glue manufacturer in order to get money for whisky.

As the years go by the pigs act more and more as if they were humans. They hold whips, wear human clothing, and walk vertically. The ideas of Animalism which are written on the Barn are diminished to a single tenet: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Napolean becomes familiar with a human farmer, Mr. Pilkington, who he has over for dinner to ally himself with against the working classes of not just the animals, but also humans. Napolean even alters the name of Animal Farm back to Manor Farm, claiming that Manor Farm is the “correct” name. One day the other animals are watching through the window at the pigs and their human counterparts, and realize they can’t tell which are which any more. The pigs have gotten so human they can’t be told apart from each other.

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As George Orwell 1984 opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O’Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group that works to overthrow the Party.

Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He is troubled by the Party’s control of history: the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when this was not true. The Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but this does not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends his evenings wandering through the poorest neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives, relatively free of Party monitoring.

One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl that reads “I love you.” She tells him her name, Julia, and they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. This relationship lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they will be caught and punished sooner or later (the fatalistic Winston knows that he has been doomed since he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is more pragmatic and optimistic. As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he receives the message that he has been waiting for: O’Brien wants to see him.

Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious apartment. As a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to the Outer Party), O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can only imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that, like them, he hates the Party, and says that he works against it as a member of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory—to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the proprietor of the store, is revealed as having been a member of the Thought Police all along.

Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into committing an open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O’Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101, the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. Here, O’Brien tells Winston that he will be forced to confront his worst fear. Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring nightmares about rats; O’Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading with O’Brien to do it to Julia, not to him.

Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.

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