In this collection of essays Orwell covers a variety of ideas, starting from why people don’t read books anymore ‘people don’t read anymore because it’s boring, not because it’s expensive’, to the dismal life of book reviewers ‘…and three books had subjects he was so ignorant of that he would have to read 50 pages of each’.
After this, Orwell writes a lot of his early life at St. Cyprians. His reflections span the bizarre such as children asking other children how much their father earns, as well as the desperate and sad, as Orwell accounts his acceptance of his life born a failure because he was born poor, with no title to his name. This sharp perspective certainly helped me to reflect on my own life, as Orwell speaks of the greatest privelege being ‘rich while young, something beyond the anbitious middle-class’. As a new entrée to the workforce at 22, I’m filled with ambition yet it often strikes me how difficult it would be to achieve these ambitions. Orwell faced a much more dire situation as a child: ‘I could not invent the existing scale of values, or turn myself into a success, but I could accept my failure and make the best of it […] endeavour to survive’.
The book is often a musing on the cruelty of the world, and reading it one sometimes feel that being reflective is always gloomy. I don’t think it is, but a piece of his essay that stood out to me is when Orwell spoke of wetting his bed, which was perceived as a choice in his day – and a choice to be punished for. He spoke of how this was a sin that one didn’t do, one didn’t want to do, one that just happened to you. ‘A sin without knowing you committed it, without wanting to commit it, without being able to avoid it’. Indeed, existing in a world where it is not possible to be good.
And now, I leave this review, shy of 1000 words and (in Orwell’s words) shy of the ‘bare minimum’. Who’s going to hold me accountable?