Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Rebellion that Failed : Orwell's 'Keep The Aspidistra Flying'

 

George Orwell’s novel shows the debilitating and depressing influence of poverty . The hero Gordon Comstock hates earning money and becomes obsessed with it. His ambition to become a famous poet, marry Rose Mary, pay back the debt he owes to his sister Julia who helped him flounder on the rock of reality. He considers himself old and motheaten and no amount of concern by his love Rose Mary convinces him otherwise. When he gets ten pounds for his poem , he spends it on giving  a party to his love Rose Mary and editor friend Ravelston. The description of internal turmoil of Gordon and his aversion to the role of money is superb. It is a yearning against middle class respectability.  He fights till the end to sink to the bottom disregarding advice by friends and well wishers to earn money. he even throes away his  manuscript of poems, London Pleasures.When he comes to know that Rose Mary becomes pregnant, his resistance melts. He goes back to his former job at Albion as a copy writer in advertisement. He settles down and the Aspidistra  plant comes back to his new found  home.

It is a moving novel that portrays the struggles of a budding poet, nonconformist, a person with low self-esteem whose rebellion ends on the rock of reality of marriage and family.                    

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