Keep the Aspidistra Flying
by George Orwell
London, 1936. Gordon Comstock declares war on the god of money; Gordon loses the battle. A poet who is almost 30 years old and whose small book of poetry, "already eaten by a moth", falls more "proud" than any pancake, Gordon gave up his "good" job and began working in a bookstore for half of his old salary. Always devastated, but too proud to accept charity, she rarely sees a few of her friends, and she can't get a virgin Rosemary to go to bed because (or she thinks so) 'If you don't have the money... women won't love you. There's a diseased but immortal aspidister on the windowsill of Gordon's battered room — a plant he hates as such a flag that escapes in its "mixed, lower-middle-class decent" downward flight. Orwell's cruelly compassionate satires, overwhelmed by the absence of rice or the need to do so, will very easily be associated. He describes in unyielding detail the ugly madness of what Gordon calls the "money world," but satire also has a second advantage, and Gordon himself is hardly a hero. During his adventures, we begin to realize unequivocally that his radical solution to the problem of the money world is not a solution at all, that in his desperate reaction to the terrible system he himself has turned into a monster. Orwell keeps both sides sharp to the end — a "happy" ending that raises tough questions about how happy he really is. The fact that the book itself is not sour, but constantly fresh and often funny, is the result of Orwell's constant and callous attention to narrative detail; dry, quiet humor; his admiration for both the stupidity and the perfection of his characters; and his courageous refusal to accept the comfort of any easy answer.
