Social Outcasts

Page 136 'The Road to Wigan Pier'

 

«It was in this way that my thoughts turned towards the English working class. It was the first time that I had ever been really aware of the working class, and to begin with it was only because they supplied an analogy. They were the simbolic victims of injustice, playing the same part in England as the Burmese played in Burma. In Burma the issue had been quite simple. The whites were up and the blacks were down, and therefore as a matter of course one´s sympathy was with the blacks. I know realized that there was no need to go as far as Burma to find tyranny and exploitation.»

 

Sorry for not giving you a background, my dear chum, but without realizing it I´ve reached chapter IX of 'The Road to Wigan Pier' and I think I´ve discovered the pearl of this book, at least until what I´ve read.

 

(This, while apparently there´re already more than 90,000 deaths on each side of the war in Ukraine, and the joys and sorrows only come from the footballers of Qatar, that country that trades with the rights of people based on money. It´s clear that morality is like a seasonal garment: when you´re interested, you wear it; if you´re not interested, don´t use it)

 

Page 137

 

«Therefore my mind turned immediately towards the extreme cases, the social outcasts: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. These were ‘the lowest of the low’, and these were the people with whom I wanted to get in contact.»

 

In these paragraphs of this chapter we find the germ of Orwell's best-known works: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

From my Borstal.

LDR

 

Orwell, G.- The Road to Wigan Pier. Collins Classics. London, 2021