George Orwell moved to London in 1927. Heavily disillusioned from his time at as police officer in Burma, he resolved to make his living as a writer.

In the two years following, Orwell struggled intensely with homelessness and poverty in shelters across London and Paris. His first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, is a memoir of this period. At 228 pages it’s a slight but enjoyable read. Orwell’s style is crisp and clear with a detached, journalistic style free of bias or judgement.

The memoir follows Orwell’s struggle to find work; to budget his meagre finances; to endure starvation; to avoid eviction; to survive the life of a tramp in London. He provides beautiful portraits of the people he meets along the way, giving readers a glimpse into their minds and lives.

Some of the experiences in Down and out in Paris and London are particularly arresting. At one point Orwell goes without food for three days. Of the experience he writes:

Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though one had been turned into a jellyfish, or as though all one’s blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted. Complete inertia is my chief memory of hunger…

The people he meets are incredible; his character-portrait of his boisterous Russian friend Boris is particularly fascinating. The man is a walking contradiction; starving, though of enormous appetite – bursting with enthusiasm one minute, crushed by utter despair the next. His life constantly oscillates between ruin and fortune. He is a human to behold. At one point when they are trying to find work together, Boris provides this sage advice:

It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.

This seems to approximate the general public’s attitude toward the poor at the time. Empathy was severely lacking.

Down and Out in Paris and London closes with a thoughtful reflection on the nature of poverty, on the systems that keep people trapped in the cycle of poverty and on preliminary ways in which the cycle might be addressed. Orwell meditates in particular on the absurdity of a tramp’s life in London:

The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and sexually…the problem is how to turn the tramp from a bored, half-alive vagrant into a self-respecting human being.

The English system forced tramps to spend their time either locked in a soul-destroying, stimuli-deprived shelter for hours each day, or else tramping to another shelter. The rules were that they could not stay in the same shelter twice in the same month. If they broke these rules, they were imprisoned. No effort was made to integrate them into society or address their condition.

Orwell’s solution is beautiful in it’s simplicity: he proposes tramps spend their time contributing to communal shelter gardens or farms – not only would this help solve the crippling boredom and inertia that wastes people away physically and mentally, but it would also help tramps gain crucial confidence and take positive steps towards being productive members of society. The food they would grow would ultimately help feed them, too, and be far better than the standard ration of stale bread and cheese.

Unfortunately, Orwell’s analysis of the systems that produce poverty is almost an afterthought. He does not spend much time analysing what he has experienced. On the upside, it makes this book an easy read and still provides insight into the conditions and faces of poverty.

Down and Out also gives us the first glimpse of the great man Orwell was to become; a champion of free society with an intense sense of justice and a talent for clear, easily comprehensible prose.

This piece was originally published at The Big Smoke.