Ordinariness in George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier - Coursework Example

Introduction In ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, George Orwell, critically analyses the conditions of the working people in the north of England in the 1930s with reference to concepts like socialism and communism. He goes on to have first hand information about the inhuman working conditions of the miners by directly associating with them, and gives a vivid description of their predicament by drawing a comparison of their lives with that of the lives of the average middle class workers. Orwell helps the readers to empathize with the working class people (here, miners), and tells how the end of capitalism and class structure of the society can help the poor lead a better life. Orwell upholds ‘ordinariness’ of the members of the working class and shows how better they are than the privileged classes even in their dire poverty. Theme of ‘Ordinariness’ in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ Orwell’s journey in ‘The Road to Wigan Piers’ may be symbolically termed as a journey from the world of the ‘haves’ to that of the ‘have-nots’. He literally undertakes the mission to go, and be a part of the world of the ordinary men and women in this before writing this essay, so that he can show to the ‘others’, the real state of their lives. Orwell begins the narration by describing his cuddled up posture on bed in order to adjust with another person lying on a bed nearly attached to his, in the tenant room. He goes on give a brief introduction about the people, he is sharing the room with. Orwell, from the very beginning makes the narrative clearly reflective of the ‘real, ordinary world’ of the workers and laborers, by telling his presence among the ‘real’ men: miners, mechanics, newspaper-canvassers, tout and so on. Orwell helps the reader to clearly visualize the condition of the Brookers’ house and their shop where everything, starting from the food items to the bedclothes, are dirty and awful. The filthy and unbearable living condition of the Brookers’ house along with the never-ending grievances of the landlord and landlady regarding their perils, disgust the author to no end but then he realizes that “it is no use saying that people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind. For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world.” (Orwell.7)He makes us feel his disgust as an outsider, but at the same time reinforcing the fact that people like the Brookers have been living in that situation for years. He attempt is largely an effort to remind the people in general of the regular working class people and their troubles. Immediate Background of Socialism before ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ Orwell, in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ directs his invective against the politicians who were condemning socialism as not the effective policy to eradicate poverty and improve the working conditions of the miners and laborers, and the so-called socialists, who were more concerned about their morality than the oppression of the workers’ class. He wanted to make the people, specially the middle class, conscious of the increasing threat of Fascism. The turn from actual socialist movement took a turn in the 1830s and 1840s, when Catherine and Goodwyn Barmby formed the Communist Church where meaningless thoughts and ideals like eating vegetarian food and wearing sandals were taught to the common people. in the late 19th century, socialism, as a theory, was heavily burdened with such beliefs. By that time, it had become an open ground for feminists, moralists, atheists, and all sort of individual groups to propagate and preach their own ideals, which they considered quint-essential for the betterment of the society. ‘Socialist’ groups like the ‘Vegetarian Cycling Society’ and ‘Clarion Field Clubs’, with the ‘holy’ purpose of breaching the gap between man and nature, were formed during this time which worked more in diverting the attention of the people from the actual purpose of the socialist movement to that of meaningless and insignificant things. It is worth mentioning here that the establishment of the Letchworth Garden City in 1904 became the ultimate heaven for the so-called ‘socialists’ of that time, and the grave for socialist movement, in the true sense of the term. Being vegetarian, wearing sandals, and reading Tolstoy and William Morris, became the symbol of designating a person as being ‘socially conscious’. Shops offering non-toxicating wine and health food were opened up in that city so that the people living over there did not have any difficulty in practicing their ‘socialist’ ideals. Clouds of false morality and ethics shrouded the original ideals of socialism, which was formed to free the exploited workers from the clutches of capitalism. Orwell’s criticism of the Contemporary Socialism Orwell had a clear notion of the harmful effects ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ could have on the society in the early 20th century in England. It becomes clear in what he thought about the then socialism, when he says “the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England”. (Orwell. 104). In response to the tenets of vegetarianism and good living in contact with nature, as propounded by the ‘socialists’ of the time, Orwell provides a heart-wrenching description of the mines where the miners work risking their lives at every instance. To make the description more vivid, Orwell himself goes down one of the mines to the pit to experience the toils of the miners before writing about them. He writes that the miners have to creep on their knees the distance from the elevator to the actual site of dismantling coal, which takes around one hour; because the tunnels are often three to four feet high and very narrow. Though officially the miners are supposed to work for seven and-a-half hours everyday, their tiresome journey to and fro is not considered. Orwell hits heavily on the face of the socialist policies of refined living of the time by projecting the dark, hard lives of the miners, “blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel”. (Orwell. 18) He aptly portrays the real world of the ordinary men and women who are far removed from the being the focus of socialism, as it was meant to be previously. The author raises questions on the legality of himself and others as being superior and better off than the miner. He states, “It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an intellectual and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior.”(Orwell. 18) He further focuses on the unhygienic sanitary condition in which the miners have to live. Very few of the houses and mines have washroom where the miners can clean themselves after spending nearly half of the day covered with coal and dirt. He mentions the public baths in the city of Barnsley as a reference, where there is provision for only nineteen men’s bathing at one time where the number of people living in the city is around seventy thousand. The problem faced by the poor miners in finding houses to live in put to sharp contrast to the refined and luxurious living of the middle class people in the garden city of Letchworth and proclaiming the principle of ‘simple living and high thinking’. He condemns the privileged class people with ample space and means to live on, for never really understanding the doom of the working class in managing for themselves a meager space for existence in an industrial area. Orwell tries to bring out their agony by stating “people will put up with anything--any hole and corner slum, any misery of bugs and rotting floors and cracking walls, any extortion of skinflint landlords and blackmailing agents--simply to get a roof over their heads.” (Orwell. 29) In fact he gives several detailed descriptions of many houses in that area with reference to number of members, rooms, beds, lavatories and the total area of a house, so that the readers may have a clear conception about the living conditions of the miners and their families. Along with space problems, the working class has to bear with abject poverty since millions of its members have no employment and has to survive on ‘dole’, a monetary grant given by the state to the unemployed. Orwell mocks the ruling class by stating the fact that they have been greatly ‘successful’ in bringing down the prices of many ‘important’ things like slippers, fashionable clothes, and alcohol, but have been quite unaware of the trials and tribulations that the miners have to face everyday to arrange a little food for themselves. He expresses the doubt in his mind regarding the nourishment that sixteen shillings a week can provide to a family of three. (Orwell. 55) He enquires into the food habit of the people and gives details of what they eat and what they cannot afford to. His reflection in this context “The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots” (Orwell. 56), once again clarifies Orwell’s concept of the class of ordinary men to be the working class people and not the middle class. The description of the women battling bitter cold wind to find tiny gravels of coal in the dust just to get a little warmth needed for survival throws the readers out of their beliefs and morality of a good life and puts them facet to face with the throbbing realities of the miners’ lives. Orwell upholds the causes that ought to be the actual reasons behind the socialist movement. He argues, “every empty belly is an argument for socialism”. (Orwell. 103) He provides a critical review of what most of the people understood by socialism during that period. Socialism, Orwell states is the concept by which everyone must “cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of work and gets his fair share of the provisions” (Orwell. 103), but maximum people either did not understand the meaning of socialism or upheld some different concept for their own economic or political benefit. He appeals to the general public by stating that this actual idea of socialism and communism, as devised by Karl Marx, would relieve the miners and other working class people of their horrible situation by allowing them the rights to basic privileges and resources. Yet before that the middle class has to shed off their inhibitions regarding the lower class and consider them as normal human beings who need to bath, eat, and sleep everyday just like them. Based on the descriptions he has provided in the first part of the book, Orwell asks the readers to take on a sympathetic and humane attitude towards the working class. In this context, he does not pretend to possess the same opinion as he has now of the working class, from his childhood. He keeps himself under the category of middle class having the typical mentality of disgust towards the lower class. Through the account of his upbringing, Orwell criticizes the way in which middle class parents sow the seeds of hatred for the lower class workers in their children, which hardly change in their adulthood. Orwell says through this book that until and unless, everyone, including both the middle class and the bourgeois feel the horror of the situation in which the miners, i.e. working class, exist in the present social structure, and firmly believe in the effectiveness of socialism as the only possible solution, the ordinary people would have to keep on suffer. Criticism of the theme of ‘ordinariness’ in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ Orwell’s has limited his circle of ordinary people to the miners only. He has been oblivious of the other profession comprising of the working class like the laborers working in the factories and industries. Though Orwell has criticized Miller’s concept of the ordinary man as not being one who works manually or dwells in the suburbs, he too has not been able to derive a complete meaning of the term ‘ordinary man’. It may be claimed that Orwell has completely ignored the fact that middle class people too can be considered as ‘ordinary men’ since they form a class and subsist on working, if not manually, to support themselves. Orwell has specifically directed his narrative in this book to the members of the middle class so that they may become aware of the plights of the miners and show sympathy to them. However, it is to be said that many people belonging to the middle-class indeed had to support themselves on an earning equal to that of the miners in the contemporary period. It is understood that Orwell has attacked the socialists and communists of the contemporary period who belong to the middle class but upholds ideas and propagandas that are directed against the common middle class people and speak more of the bourgeois class. Yet on a whole, he has totally ignored the working people of the middle class in order to focus on the miners. In his attempt to arouse sympathy in the minds of the readers about the miners and their families, Orwell has somewhat stereotyped the income and status of the miners. He has even listed the daily expenditure on food items by some families to assert the fact that working class people do have lesser income than the middle class does. He strictly distinguishes the working class as being underprivileged, whereas several people earn an equal income to that of the miners, and still belongs to the middle class because in Britain, people are classified generally based on their birth, profession, and manners. Conclusion Though Orwell offers a heavily biased picture of the working class by focusing chiefly on the miners, yet that picture in itself is all encompassing. The author does not leave out anything from his inspection that might make his plea on improving the conditions of the miners stronger and more persuasive. The journey to ‘ordinariness’, that is supposed to be the central line of ‘The Road to Wigan Piers’, indeed is a proclamation of the living condition of the ordinary working class people. Though they are mostly neglected by the not so ordinary ‘socialists’ and moral propagandists, yet it is on them that the structure of the modern society stands. To state in the words of Orwell, “In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported.”(Orwell. 10) Works Cited Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. Oxford Publication. 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