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emleemay 's review for:
The Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell
[b:The Road to Wigan Pier|30553|The Road to Wigan Pier|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414451091l/30553._SY75_.jpg|1034643] is a very interesting book. For several reasons.
Personal to me is the reason that the first part of the book documents the poverty and squalor of working class life in Northern industrial towns in Britain. It feels personal because this is where I am from, and the people he describes could easily be my grandparents, who grew up dirt poor in Yorkshire in the 1930s and 1940s. My maternal grandfather was a coal miner just like the ones that Orwell describes in detail here. Horrendous conditions down the mines left him with a lifetime of health problems.
This book was eye-opening when it was first published, as many outside of the Northern industrial sectors had absolutely no idea how the other half lived.
The second part of the book is an analysis of socialism as a cultural and economic model and a suggestion for how we could convince sceptics to employ it. Anyone who read [b:Animal Farm|170448|Animal Farm|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1325861570l/170448._SY75_.jpg|2207778] and [b:1984|40961427|1984|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1532714506l/40961427._SX50_.jpg|153313] and imagined them as an indictment of socialism would better understand Orwell's views by reading this book. He is not against socialism at all. He is against Stalinism and totalitarianism, which any sane person should be, but he sees socialism as the way forward.
I found it especially interesting how he talks about the view non-socialists have of socialists, because it still seems relevant today. He explains how the working class-- those with the most to gain from socialism --are not "intellectual" socialists and are not what non-socialists imagine when they think of socialists. Non-socialists are often hostile towards socialists because they picture an eccentric, middle-class, "vegetarian" member of the intelligentsia, and they despise this.
This is certainly true today. Conservative pundits continue to sneer at the coddled, university-educated "socialist" with their fancy schmancy "woke" talk (or whatever it is the conservatives are waffling about these days), when socialism is actually most beneficial to the working class, not this imagined stereotype.
Anyway, another good Orwell book. If anything, part two goes on a little too long. Interested as I was, there's only so much theory analysis I can take.
Personal to me is the reason that the first part of the book documents the poverty and squalor of working class life in Northern industrial towns in Britain. It feels personal because this is where I am from, and the people he describes could easily be my grandparents, who grew up dirt poor in Yorkshire in the 1930s and 1940s. My maternal grandfather was a coal miner just like the ones that Orwell describes in detail here. Horrendous conditions down the mines left him with a lifetime of health problems.
This book was eye-opening when it was first published, as many outside of the Northern industrial sectors had absolutely no idea how the other half lived.
The second part of the book is an analysis of socialism as a cultural and economic model and a suggestion for how we could convince sceptics to employ it. Anyone who read [b:Animal Farm|170448|Animal Farm|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1325861570l/170448._SY75_.jpg|2207778] and [b:1984|40961427|1984|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1532714506l/40961427._SX50_.jpg|153313] and imagined them as an indictment of socialism would better understand Orwell's views by reading this book. He is not against socialism at all. He is against Stalinism and totalitarianism, which any sane person should be, but he sees socialism as the way forward.
I found it especially interesting how he talks about the view non-socialists have of socialists, because it still seems relevant today. He explains how the working class-- those with the most to gain from socialism --are not "intellectual" socialists and are not what non-socialists imagine when they think of socialists. Non-socialists are often hostile towards socialists because they picture an eccentric, middle-class, "vegetarian" member of the intelligentsia, and they despise this.
This is certainly true today. Conservative pundits continue to sneer at the coddled, university-educated "socialist" with their fancy schmancy "woke" talk (or whatever it is the conservatives are waffling about these days), when socialism is actually most beneficial to the working class, not this imagined stereotype.
Anyway, another good Orwell book. If anything, part two goes on a little too long. Interested as I was, there's only so much theory analysis I can take.