Rating: 
Summary: Two in One
Review: "The Road to Wigan Pier" has the reputation of being one of Orwell's more important works, a condemnation of the iniquities of inter-War British society. Yet reading it for the first time, I was struck by how really it's two different yet connected books in one.
The first half is a description of Orwell's experiences of living in working class communities in Northern England. He spares the reader very little, having a highly observant eye and demonstrating great skill in relating the misery of people's lives. Here, Orwell's prose is at its simplest and most direct.
In the second half there follows a critique of British imperialism, the capitalist system, British Socialists and the class system. Much of it was no doubt of contemporary importance: Orwell's deep concern about the rise of Fascism and the inadequacy of the Socialist response for instance. But I thought that the second half was less well written and less convincing than the first. Essentially, it's a polemical piece, with Orwell pouring scorn and much vitriol on all his targets, so much so that his more telling points are obscured. He attacks fashionable Socialism (and fashionable Socialists) but is curiously opaque as to an alternative.
In summary this is a famous, yet very uneven work. The second half of it is a chore, but nonetheless as a whole, it's worth the effort.
G Rodgers
Rating:
Summary: Misguided on the road to Wigan Pier
Review: A politically niave and socially ignorant work of at least admirable intentions. A worthy read, but one should approach it with a cynical and open mind. Do not let Orwell spoon feed you with his prejudice. He attacks the entire middle class for being of one particular type and seeing the working class as another diametrically opposed type without seeing that he himself is guilty of the same crime, although the victims may be less 'worthy'. There is no blurring of the line, no consideration for specialist cases. Orwell's world is black and white, but mostly black. His views of socialists are appalling, as is his argument in favour. The heavy-handed emotive poignancy of the first half of the book is excessive in parts, although Orwell's descriptions of various wives in the same half of the book are utterly beautiful and make the book a must-read on their own. Any would-be socialists should read this, just for the feeling of indignant rage it gives you. Students of social policy or economic conditions in 1930s Britain will need to take it with a whole sack of salt. Still, a massively entertaining and thought-provoking read. Go on, try it.
Rating: 
Summary: Unusually Dull.
Review: As the story goes, Orwell was engaged to write a story about the then massive unemployment in the North of England. The first few chapters recount Orwell's experience in a working-class boarding house and then underground with coal miners...and they are fascinating. Orwell's deft talent for recounting the subtle is well demonstrated in these compelling and often hilarious early chapters... and then it happens. Orwell's insights into class distiction are well known, and way too often shared, especially here. Orwell cheaps out by prattling on about why he thinks no one really wants true socialism and blah, blah, blah. Even cheaper(!), Orwell constantly references already written works to demonstrate his point. So much so, that any reader would be vastly better off reading Orwell's fabulous semi-biographical "Down and Out in Paris and London" instead. If you decided to read this book, I think you can guiltlessly toss it aside after the coal mining recallections.
Rating: 
Summary: Excludes a bit, but powerful and entertaining nonetheless
Review: First off, I'd like to point out that socialism is NOT communism, since one of the other reviewers failed to make the distinction.
Secondly, Orwell did not write this book "for the socialists" in the sense that some of the other reviews imply. He wrote the first half of the book-an analysis of living/working conditions of coal miners in North England- by request of the Left Book Club, a British socialist organization. The second half of the book- a critique of socialism and socialists- was not requested by the club, in fact, it prompted a rebuttal from a representative of the organization in the original release (which is included as an introduction in other editions of the book.)
The half of the book about the miners and their lives is heartbreakingly poignant, described well by the other reviews. Read them. The second half is a well reasoned constructive critique of socialism and socialists. Orwell points out that most of those middle-class folk who claim to be socialists, in actuality, are not: they wouldn't be willing to lower their own standard of living for the sake of elevating those in poverty. He points out that the alternate view of "why don't we just elevate the standard of living for EVERYONE?" is a bit of a Jesus complex that would never work. He goes on to compare "bearded juice-drinking Marx-quoting Socialists" to the likes of pushy evangelical Christians, saying that most Socialists actually harm their cause and turn others away from socialism rather than converting them. Hillarious, wether you are a critic or friend of socialism (assuming that you have a sense of humor...)
The one complaint I have about this book is that Orwell states that socialism is "obviously" the only cure for the ills of the coal miners described in the first half of the book. He never says how or why. One could extrapolate that socialism could alleviate the housing shortage by providing subsidized housing in the mining towns, and that it could improve the conditions in the mines by applying industry standards to how the mines are run. Wether this would actually be the case could be argued, but the author doesn't even bother to give any support to his claim.
Overall a great book- read both parts!
Rating: 
Summary: The bookshop clerk hid it from the other customers
Review: I found this book when I was living in Sydney, Australia. When I brought the book to the front to pay for it, the clerk kept tucking it under a paper bag, hiding it from the other customers milling around the desk. Everytime I took it out from under the bag, the clerk hid it again. This happened several times, until I finally left. It gave me the immediate feeling that I was buying something a little bit illegal, a little dangerous, something that I shouldn't have, because the clerk had never done that to me before or after. The first thing I noticed about my little copy of the Road to Wigan's Pier is that is said it was not for sale in the U.S.A.. I recognize now that it was because of copyright issues, but at the time, I thought maybe the reason I had never seen this book in the States, is because it was somewhat suppressed for some reason. I was expecting more 1984, not a documentary of life in Northern England, not a political commentary. Since then, I have read the book perhaps ten times. It seems that Orwell (Blair) wrote the populist 1984 and Animal Farm simply to get readers to read his earlier works, like this one. Orwell is clearly a master of words, of pacing and of emotion. He can manipulate the reader transparently. By about the fifth reading of Pier, I began to feel that Orwell could have written bestsellers like 1984 and Farm much more easily than this one. So why is the book important, if for half of it he simply analyses the now-historical beginnings of the Socialist movement? Maybe because it doesn't matter in what direction Socialism has headed since he wrote this book, he wasn't analysing socialism or class issues as much as was busy digging up the truth of socialists, of the unemployed, of the homeless, of the middle class and the upper class. This analysis is still just as valid in 2004, as it was in 1930, even if the names of the political parties and the occupations have changed. This book was witten by a truthful person, who perhaps stretched the truth a bit, or condensed it, or altered it. These are literary devices. But the meaning of the book, as is most valuable today, is about a poverty-stricken middle class that gets itself into debt to keep up the appearance of a higher class. And it is about a lower class that is essentially better off, even with the hungry belly and the dirty rooms, than this affected middle class from which Blair came. Maybe this is the message that is so dangerous, the one that bookshop clerk tried to hide from the other customers. This book brings the poverty to light, and finds that the poverty-stricken can redeem themselves. But when Orwell unearths the truth of the middle class, the true subversive nature of this book spills all over the floor like a drunk puking on stage. What has not changed in almost a century is that the middle class may never be redeemed so long as we think that a "plate of strawberries and cream" is somehow our key to salvation. It fills our guts with something other than what we genuinely hunger. To toss that plate onto the floor and stomp around the house for a piece of black bread with hard crust will wake the babies. But more dangerous, it may force the owner of the strawberry farm and the owner of the dairy farm to get their own hands dirty. "And what of the farmhands, if these soft-hands are doing the work they once did?" As Blair points out, it can only get better when you're already living at the bottom.
Rating:
Summary: Written in a blind rage
Review: Orwell's writing is alive. It interacts with you, striking you, caressing you, wiping away your tears, turning up the corners of your mouth in a smile. In The Road to Wigan Pier, he recreates for you this wonderfully real portrait of a working-class slum in 1930's England, and you can see how strongly he reacted to it. The first half is an almost overpowering description of the appalling conditions he found there, and it's all written Orwell's way: the floor so old it's transparent, the landlord with the black thumb, the sweaty claustrophobia of a coal mine. The second half of the book is Orwell's political standpoint of the time, which would alter radical over the course of his life. It's not exactly a watertight argument (it somehow feels unfinished), but Orwell, you must admit, is angry and he makes you angry. This is a very gutsy and well-written book
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: 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.
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