It is hard to believe that Orwell had to work as hard as he did to become the kind of writer he was, because it isn’t believable that that kind of prowess comes from anything other than a god-given talent, furnished the very way it was manifest in his books, in his essays and his beliefs in life.
Orwell studied socialism fervently and was its staunch advocate. His book ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ is a significant show of his depth of research into the field, and his ability to take us into a magical literary journey at the same time.
You see, the book would never look good as a movie – it lacks the concept of a protagonist, a hero. It is not a novel, in the first place. It is an experience he undertook to live out as part of research for this book, whether he was driven to it or he voluntarily gave up his holdings in order to feel it is unclear.
My friend and I were talking today about how video is generally more efficient in order to convey messages. Efficient, in that there is little wastage of space and time in getting across what one has to. But here, the imagery is beautifully sustained by the language; it thrives upon the language and contains an accurate smorgasbord of indulgent, almost enthusiastic cynicism and removed and reflective romanticism.
It starts off in an alleyway in Paris, the Rue D’Or, and describes the sights, smells and sounds in first person. He stays there for a few months working as a plongeur, and gains an unforgettable experience in that short time. Orwell seems rather taken with Paris as a country with an irrepressible charm, and talks more poetically about Paris than he does about London, where he goes on to, in the second part of the book. The characters in his life too, are all loosely fitted into everyone else’s lives, with some smooth edges, some jagged, but the melody seems to be in harmony. A character that touched me, especially, was one called Charlie, with his mesmerizingly narrated stories about life and how he lived it. An aspect of Orwell’s superior literary talent comes through with this character because either he has retained the real person’s talent for storytelling by reproducing his stories as they were or he coloured the character of any Charlie to make him so, either of which is a great literary achievement.
In London, he rues that the life of a tramp must be so boring. There is really nothing much to it, when one reads about it, than standing around, (sitting on the pavement could have serious consequences in London unlike Paris) walking from one ‘spike’ to another earning the free food (bad, of course, because policy was that good food must not be served to the tramps.) and a place to sleep at night. He grew very close to a pavement artist whose philosophy was something unlike he had ever encountered and he greatly admired the man.
Many of the last pages of the book are filled with serious studies of the social situation and the conclusions drawn from his first-hand experience of them, in two of the most important cities in the world in the post-WWI era.
