During one extended period of hunger in Paris, Orwell himself gives into despair, reading The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes because “it was all I felt equal to, without food.” He writes that, “Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after effects of influenza than anything else. Trying to survive on a diet of bread and margarine has completely unmanned Paddy Jacques, Orwell’s companion in London, and a number of the men he meets in the city’s casual wards. On the other, a scarcity of food depletes a person’s capacity to work. On one hand, employers will not hire anyone who looks hungry. Lack of employment leads to poverty and poverty leads to hunger, which Orwell shows is a prison of its own. Their grueling search for work and the setbacks they encounter on account of their ragged appearance reveal that the wealthy’s self-serving narrative about the poor (that they are poor because they won’t work hard and help themselves) is a lie. Orwell and his friend, Boris, with whom he spends the bulk of the Paris chapters, look the part of poor men (their clothing gives them away). Rather, privilege begets privilege because getting work often depends on already having it (or having the money that allows you to look like you have it). Bozo’s story shows that bettering oneself is never merely a matter of will. A perfect example of this phenomenon is Bozo, a London pavement artist who becomes destitute after an accident on the job and never recovers financially. They are simply regular people, who, thanks to a reversal of fortune, get caught in a downward spiral that is nearly impossible to escape or reverse. Instead, Orwell shows how most of the people he met during his period of destitution became poor as a result of bad luck.Ĭontrary to conventional wisdom, the poor are not inherently different from the rich. Orwell attacks the idea (which was commonly held at the time and is even still widely held today) that poverty is something that poor people deserve because of their lack of will, merit, or ability. George Orwell makes it clear from the beginning that his book, which has been described as both a memoir and as an autobiographical novel, is meant to dash misconceptions about the poor and illustrate the effect that being poor has on the human psyche.
Down and Out in Paris and London is a story of poverty.
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