Down and Out in Paris and London

About This Novel

In 1927, the 24-year-old George Orwell resigned from his post as a colonial policeman in Burma and began to travel between the British mainland and the European continent, wandering around and trying various careers. He worked as a hotel dishwasher, a teacher, a bookstore clerk, and a longshoreman. Although he was poor, he was born in the middle class and experienced the life of the lower class firsthand. Orwell himself once said that "a life of poverty and a sense of failure strengthened my natural hatred of authority and made me aware of the existence of the working class for the first time." In 1933, Orwell wrote the novel "Down and Out in Paris and London" based on this experience. The book is divided into two parts. The first half describes the miserable life of a British literati living at the bottom of society by doing odd jobs in Paris. The second half describes the literati's experiences when he returned to London from Paris, where his living conditions further deteriorated, and he became a jobless vagrant and moved around. The book is interspersed with the protagonist's thoughts and comments, providing an in-depth analysis of the true meaning of poverty. But at the same time, there is still dark humor in the suffering. For example, when writing about the hard and tiring life of a dishwasher, one still never forgets to make fun of the classic line "Roughly speaking, the more you pay for a dish, the more sweat and spit you will eat."

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