“The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.”

Down and Out in Paris and London was George Orwell’s first published novel. Depicting his experience living in abject poverty in both Paris and London it serves as an insight into the way in which the poorest of society lived at that time (and in many ways still live today).  Orwell attacks the idea, that people are poor or homeless, because they just haven’t worked hard enough. He shows how difficult the spiral of poverty, once it has begun, is to escape. That’s not to say that this is a perfect book, his depiction of women, frankly, often reads like something you would find on r/theredpill. Women for example are rarely homeless because “any presentable woman can, in the last resort, attach herself to some man.” But he did publish the book in 1933, so I suppose we can chalk a certain amount down to it simply being a product of the times.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the book. As someone currently struggling with finding a purpose for my life, as well as a steady livelihood, I related to Orwell’s often fruitless attempts to search for work, and the constant rejection from hotel managers. I have worked as a waitress and I appreciated his description of working as a dish washer, and how hard that life is, I thought he really captured the craziness of the kitchen that is carefully hidden behind closed doors from unsuspecting diners. Thankfully, I have never pawned my clothes, lived on bread and margarine or slept in a room with bedbugs. But the book reminds us that we are all just humans, struggling through and trying to live our lives.

Also, having worked at a summer camp in America and lived off Sysco food (literally prison food) for nearly three months I particularly enjoyed this passage:

“But I imagine that the customers at the Hôtel X were especially easy to swindle, for they were mostly Americans… and seemed to know nothing whatever about good food. They would stuff themselves with disgusting American ‘cereals’, and eat marmalade at tea, and drink vermouth after dinner, and order a poulet à la reine at a hundred francs and then souse it in Worcester sauce. One customer, from Pittsburg, dined every night in his bedroom on grape-nuts, scrambled eggs and cocoa. Perhaps it hardly matters whether such people are swindled or not.”