A review by jadesx96
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

2.0

Just finished this book for a course on literature and 1930s politics. For me this was much more of a frustrating read than some of his fictional works. The change from narrative style to documentary form to rambling ranting essay is somewhat jarring and incohesive, it made very little sense to me and made it harder to digest the underlying message of the book. Moreover, Orwell's tone is subtly hypocritical (something that reveals itself in his discussion of the class divide), as well as extracts from the diary he wrote in Wigan which demonstrate how some of his observations have been dramatised and even changed in a way that allows him to remove himself from really confronting and giving a voice to the subjects. Orwell largely projects his own ideas about the working class onto the people he meets and I feel that we don't get an accurate portrayal of how the labourers in mining towns really feel about their way of life. It almost reads as "this is how these poor people live, isn't it pitiful?" I feel that Orwell's tone, whilst trying to contextualise Britain's need for socialism, was inherently infantilising and condescending. Of course, he does make some interesting points in his discussion of socialism, for instance the idea that people inherently agree with the ideology but are turned away by the people who practice it. I feel this is something which resonates with modern politics with the use of social media as a new space for political discussion. However, I think that perhaps some people are too quick to take Orwell's opinions as gospel based on how revered and lauded his works such as 1984 and Animal Farm are.