Referat Book report - George Orwell - Down And Out In Paris And London - Summary

Down And Out In Paris And London

Summary:     

Down and Out in Paris and London is a documentary of the life of lower class people in Paris and London. Orwell shows up the social conditions of the so-called plongeurs (they are cheap and unqualified workers in restaurants, hotels etc.) in Paris, and of the tramps in London. By joining these people, and living amongst them, Orwell generates a very realistic view. It was even more than that, Orwell wasn't only living amongst them, for these months he was even one of them.

The book consists of 38 chapters. The first 25 chapters are about Orwell's experience as a plongeur in Paris, and the next chapters describe his experience as a tramp in England.

Orwell's narration starts in the Rue Du Coq D'Or, a street in one of the slums in Paris. This was a very busy street and many foreigners lived there in very cheap hotels. Despite the dirt and the social problems there were also some respectable French people living in this quarter. Most of them owned tiny shops and bistros. In the evening the bistros were full and the people where drinking, singing and laughing there. Orwell wrote that he thinks this slum is a quite representative one for Paris.

Orwell stayed in the Hôtel des Trois Moineaux, a very dirty place with many bugs. The other lodgers where foreigners of any trade: artists, navvies, students and prostitutes. Orwell earned his living by giving English lessons occasionally. The money he earned with the lessons wasn't enough, and one month before his savings came to an end he started looking for a job. He intended to become a tourist guide or something similar. But a piece of bad luck prevented this. A young Italian has robbed nearly all his savings (Later Orwell admitted to a friend that he wasn't robbed by an Italian, but stripped of all his money by a girl. He didn't want to admit a relation because of his conservative parents). This was the time when Orwell's real poverty begun. From this time on Orwell had to live on six francs a day.

He describes that poverty isn't the way we expect it to be. We, who have never experienced real poverty, think that it must be terrible, it isn't, it happens to be squalid and boring. Another problem is that you don't dare to admit it, you have to pretend that you are living quite well. You have to waste desperately needed money on things you can't afford, just to make people think that you are well off. These lies are expensive lies. He also describes that poverty and in consequence hunger degrade a man to 'a belly with some additional organs'. Orwell lived three weeks like this, until his last savings were gone. From this point on, he had to live on his money that he earned with English lessons, this were thirty-six francs a week. He had no experience of being poor, and so he often handled the money bad and was a day without food. Sometimes he smuggled out some clothes to bring them to the pawnshop, to get some money.

One day even the English lessons were cancelled abruptly. At this point Orwell decided to pawn all his clothes, and to stop pretending being well of. At the pawnshop he didn't get the money he had expected, and so he left disappointed, with no clothes, except what he stood in, and only little money left. Luckily some days later he received two hundred francs for a newspaper article he wrote, and so could afford to pay another months rent. Now Orwell realized that he had to look for a job. He went to visit an old friend, a Russian called Boris, who had promised him some help. Boris had fled from Russia after the revolution, and has worked his way up to be a waiter. Boris was a former officer at the Russian army and therefore pleased about everything that had to do with soldiers. Boris often used to talk about the army and his dream of saving enough money as a waiter, in order to open an own restaurant.

So Orwell went to visit Boris. But what he found there didn't make him expect too much. The address Boris has given him was a tiny dirty little hotel in a narrow back street. Orwell was very disappointed when he saw that Boris was even worse off than himself. Boris was in this situation because he was injured at his leg, and therefore he was still a bit lame. In the afternoon Boris and Orwell went out to search a job. They went to a café, which was used as an employment bureau. Young waiters, dishwashers, cooks and many more were sitting in the café with an untouched cup of coffee. Once in a while a restaurateur would come in and talk to the barman. The barman then would call a person. Boris and Orwell sat there for two hours (that was the maximum one could stay there) but they were never called. Later they heard that one had to give the barman twenty francs to get a job. They went to some other restaurants and cafés, without result. In the next weeks they went around in Paris looking for a job. Everything went as bad as possible, and it seemed that they missed jobs by half an hour. Boris sometimes collapsed in the utterest despair. Then he would lie the whole day in bed cursing. The situation became worse and worse. In his despair Orwell even went fishing in the Seine, but he didn't fish anything, that could feed him. At this point even Boris was completely out of money. He even had to flee from his room, because he couldn't afford to pay the months' rent. Boris pawned all his clothes, and so they could afford their first meal after having been three days without food.