The Road to Wigan Pier

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Emotions
Review: The first half of this book was very consuming. I found myself caught up in the mines of England and could relate to the characters with Orwell's great descriptions. But the second half of the book was totallu different. It was Orwell writing a paper about how he felt about socialism and class destinctions in England. To some this may be a very appealing subject, but to me, I had trouble understanding what Orwell wanted to say to the reader. Part one of this book is great and I highly reccommend it, but once I began to read part two I had trouble picking the book up to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Emotions
Review: The first half of this book was very consuming. I found myself caught up in the mines of England and could relate to the characters with Orwell's great descriptions. But the second half of the book was totallu different. It was Orwell writing a paper about how he felt about socialism and class destinctions in England. To some this may be a very appealing subject, but to me, I had trouble understanding what Orwell wanted to say to the reader. Part one of this book is great and I highly reccommend it, but once I began to read part two I had trouble picking the book up to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: Wigan Pier is an excellent book which is FOR socialism
Review: The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliantly written work of documentary literature, with a propoganda piece tacked on at the end. Orwell describes the poverty and hardships of working people in the industrial disctricts in the north of England, based on what he himself has seen and heard during his travels there. The second part is entirely political, and does not seem nearly as interesting to today's reader. But the matter it deals with - the great struggle between socialism and fascism - was of extreme urgency in the late 1930's, when Orwell wrote the book. It's important to remember that Orwell did NOT attack socialism. He merely raised what he considered were the most likely objections to socialism, then refuted them. That a large corporation like Amazon.com would accuse him of "slanting his reporting" shows what a true socialist he really was.

Rating:
Summary: Very Lively
Review: There's no point to defending Orwell's attitude towards the progressive rich (as expressed in this book). But his point is really quite simple: the working classes are more old-fashioned and less academic than the upper classes; therefore, if the stereotypical socialist is a "bearded fruit-juice drinker" who discusses Marx over tea, the movement is not going to collect members. Not revolutionary, but true enough and expressed with enough vigour to make it an entertaining polemic.

That said, I prefer the first half of the book, where Orwell describes his stint in the coal-mining districts of the north of England. He is excellent on the squalor and awfulness of life in the mining towns, as well as the unemployment question and the general effects of the Depression. The chapter on working-class houses in Sheffield, though less vivid, is also excellent. Orwell isn't too much of a graphic artist, but he gives you enough detail that it's a minor imaginative task to reconstruct the lifestyle he's writing about.

And, having reconstructed this landscape, it's difficult not to half-agree with his evocation of the dignity of a working man's life before the war, or to feel with him that "it is not the triumphs of modem engineering ... but the memory of working-class interiors - especially as I sometimes saw them in my childhood before the war, when England was still prosperous - that reminds me that our age has not been altogether a bad one to live in."

Rating:
Summary: The novelist, not the analyst, speaks...
Review: This 1937 book is a political and social commentary about aspects of working life in 1930s England, and an endorsement by the author of socialism as the best way forward.

The title is 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. But at the end of Chapter 4, we are told: 'Alas! Wigan Pier has been demolished, and even the spot where it used to stand is no longer certain.' Presumably the book title is the author's joke, and was intended to mean, 'the road to nowhere certain'?

The book:

Part 1 (of 2): Images. We are told that many 1930s working people are dreadful people, and that many live dreadful lives. We are shown how unpleasant 1930s lodging houses are, how hard the life of a miner is, how poor the quality of British housing is; we are told about overcrowding, about the horrendous 1930s unemployment situation in England, about the poor diet of the working classes, trying to live on a budget, and about poor people having to scramble after pit trucks to get coal; we are told of the north-south divide. The writer does not spare his criticisms of the nature of working people, as well as criticising their situations.

Part 2 (of 2): Endorsement of socialism. We are told about the division of British society into 'classes' in the 1930s: that people are brought up to perceive themselves as divided into certain 'classes' in which they tend to stay; we are told the history of the author's life as a policeman in Burma as part of the machinery of oppression there, and of his experience living as a pretend-tramp. We are told that the future, for the worker, lies in socialism (despite many socialists being an unappealing lot), and that workers ought to unite against the 'bourgeoisie', through socialism, by reference to their common status as exploited workers, rather than by reference to other factors (i.e that all paid workers should unite as one group against those controlling/paying them).

This peculiar book is interesting, thought-provoking and intelligently written, but it is somewhat half-baked in places, rants a lot, is very rude about a lot of people, especially about manual workers; is unfocussed and unclear in what it wants to say, and the book leads nowhere certain except to endorse some vague form of socialism as the appropriate way forward, at the end. Noticeably absent from Part 2 is any analysis of how economics work, or consideration by the author of any impracticalities inherent in socialism. The book is a rant rather than a more incisive analysis.

A lot of people will probably find themselves reading this book after reading some of Orwell's fine fiction works. If so, they will probably find this book a little disappointing. His fine style of writing and his brilliant mind shine through, but the analysis itself disappoints, particularly in Part Two, the second half of the book.

Rating:
Summary: The Picture Speaks for Itself
Review: This book is divided into two sections. The first is a devastating account of the lives of coal miners in the north of England. While this account may be exaggerated it is completely conceivable that life in this time under such social and political conditions might have been like this. He goes to considerable length to explore the personal reactions and methods of endurance of the people he met. Orwell's dedication to exploring what life was really like for the coal miners was made at considerable personal discomfort and were as heroic as Jonathan Kozol's efforts in our present time.

The second half of the book is a long argument by Orwell of the negative aspects of socialism. He does this in order to provoke a serious discussion over how socialism can be implemented in our society. He understood well, as demonstrated in 1984, that many political parties use propaganda as a means of convincing the public that theirs is the right way. But, by taking the opposing view and criticising his own beliefs, he is able to bring the issues of the party into an open forum to consider implementations of change rather than party rhetoric. He does this most sincerely and in no way tries to hide the faults of the socialist political system of thought. In doing so he proves himself to be quite dignified in his system of beliefs. The juxtaposition of these two sections provides a striking idea of the immediate need for political reformation. He did not need to defend socialism because the need for a political change that could effect the lives of the lower class he investigated was obvious. This showed that Orwell's political ideas didn't exist on some ideological utopian plain, but were firmly rooted in the immense danger a political system could inflict upon a large population. It would be wise to remember this in reading the more popular 1984 and Animal Farm as well.

This book is compelling not just for people interested in politics, but also for anyone interested in history and the human condition. It is something you will be able to learn much from and provide you with inspiration.

Rating:
Summary: Outshines Animal Farm and 1984 by 10,000 WATTS
Review: This is an excellent book. After having to read in high school (in the 1970s) both Animal Farm and 1984, I confess that I approached this book with some trepidation. However, Orwell's descriptions of life as a coal miner and his honest thoughts about Socialism, both in defense and in criticism, make me wonder why the English teachers of the early 1970s didn't have us read this book instead. It is much better written and more honest.

Rating:
Summary: unlike anything else i've ever read!
Review: well, to be honest, i have not read the book. yet. but it looks just fantastic. and it comes highly recommended by my friend Richard Thompson. His email is [e-mail] if anyone wants to share their thoughts about the book.

Rating:
Summary: Lesser known of Orwell's work, but NOT lesser valued...
Review: What a valuable examination! As other reviewers have pointed out, the Left Book Club of UK nearly three quarters of a century ago (!) commissioned Mr. Orwell to write on the condition of the coal miners in North Yorkshire. The first half of the book shows Orwell's observations of the squalor and struggles of those working people. However, Orwell continued with a whole second essay. In that second portion of the text, he criticized the left for its arrogance, its being out of touch with that which it claimed to want to remedy.

Orwell raises issues that could as easily apply today pertinent to those dedicated to "change" the conditions of those of whom they have little grasp. That's the only depressing thing about the book: so little has changed in so much time.

Some observations on the then-growing fascist movement in Europe are eye-openers too.

Read it and weep? Or read it and LEARN!

Rating:
Summary: Lesser known of Orwell's work, but NOT lesser valued...
Review: What a valuable examination! As other reviewers have pointed out, the Left Book Club of UK nearly three quarters of a century ago (!) commissioned Mr. Orwell to write on the condition of the coal miners in North Yorkshire. The first half of the book shows Orwell's observations of the squalor and struggles of those working people. However, Orwell continued with a whole second essay. In that second portion of the text, he criticized the left for its arrogance, its being out of touch with that which it claimed to want to remedy.

Orwell raises issues that could as easily apply today pertinent to those dedicated to "change" the conditions of those of whom they have little grasp. That's the only depressing thing about the book: so little has changed in so much time.

Some observations on the then-growing fascist movement in Europe are eye-openers too.

Read it and weep? Or read it and LEARN!