Keep the Aspidistra Flying Review

Review

“He wanted to sink down, down into the much where money does not rule.”

George Orwell did not disappoint with this novel!

It follows Gordon Comstock in his war against the “money-god”. Refusing to be shackled with the many abomination that comes with money.

The way George Orwell writes is truly magnificent. Most, if not all, of the books he wrote that I’ve read are timeless pieces. Written so long ago, yet collides strongly still in our current day and age.

The central theme of the novel revolves around society, money, and how people cannot truly be free of the evil that comes with money.

As any classics, this novel heavily relies on thematic descriptions of the main characters state of mind and situations with which he placed himself in. With that in mind, the book can get quite boring; though equally interesting still. The pacing of the story also allows the reader to get to know not only the main character but also the circumstances of the world to which he lives in.

Can a man live against money? Money is inescapable. Despite all denials, money is still the very foundation that enables society to function. A pillar with which supports for daily necessities.

An engaging and intelligent novel with a fantastic theme, ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ is definitely a must-read!

About the Author

Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism.

In addition to his literary career Orwell served as a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922-1927 and fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War from 1936-1937. Orwell was severely wounded when he was shot through his throat. Later the organization that he had joined when he joined the Republican cause, The Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), was painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a Trotskyist organization (Trotsky was Joseph Stalin’s enemy) and disbanded. Orwell and his wife were accused of “rabid Trotskyism” and tried in absentia in Barcelona, along with other leaders of the POUM, in 1938. However by then they had escaped from Spain and returned to England.

Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. He was a prolific polemical journalist, article writer, literary critic, reviewer, poet, and writer of fiction, and, considered perhaps the twentieth century’s best chronicler of English culture.

Orwell is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) and the satirical novella Animal Farm (1945) — they have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. His 1938 book Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, have been widely acclaimed.

Orwell’s influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues decades after his death. Several of his neologisms, along with the term “Orwellian” — now a byword for any oppressive or manipulative social phenomenon opposed to a free society — have entered the vernacular.