Book Notes, Summary and Review: The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

In the first half of the book, George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier investigates the bleak living conditions among the British working class before World War II. The second half is an essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the English people's political sentiments towards socialism.

On industrialization and modernization

An idea that Orwell underscores is how society, on a whole, may achieve remarkable progress from industrialization and modernization, but there's a detrimental consequence which we often turn a blind eye to.

For a country to modernize, thousands and thousands of lower- and middle-class workers are subjected to brutal working conditions. Take, for instance, coal-miners. As Orwell describes in his sociological investigations of the working conditions of coal-miners in England:

Watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes different people inhabit [...] Yet it is the absolutely necessary counterpart of our world above [...] For all the arts of peace coal is needed; if war breaks out it is needed all the more.

Humankind's instinctual impulse to invent and improve has subjected millions of people into abysmal living conditions. To many, the working conditions in which these coal-miners have to experience is so incomprehensible, that some of us rather not know about it. Yet, as Orwell asserts, we cannot "disregard them if you accept the civilization that produced them", because this is "what industrialism has done for us".

On class division

It is only when you meet someone of a different culture from yourself that you begin to realize what your own beliefs really are.

Orwell's quote above, perhaps, best encapsulates the problems associated with class division. When we enable factors like differences of education or of mannerisms to get in the way, it becomes impossible to display affection towards those who are perceived to be different from us. We become unempathetic towards others, and fail to recognize them as equals.

As class divisions become wider, we also become increasingly adjusted to the new status quo. For example, Orwell noted how the working man is constantly pressed down by a "thousand influences" into a passive position, and doesn't act but rather is acted upon. This makes it only more challenging for the working man to climb up the social ladder, leaving him entrapped in the lower echelons of society, with little to no autonomy over his life.

On poverty

Poverty is another major topic which Orwell dwells on throughout his book. Here, Orwell not only describes the more obvious manifestation of poverty — physical poverty — but also its less commonly discussed twin: spiritual poverty.

One of the most striking things when reading about the poverty in England before World War II was how physical poverty actually looked like. As Orwell points out:

A luxury is nowadays almost always cheaper than a necessity [...] For the price of one square meal you can get two pounds of cheap sweets.

In my mind, I often conceived physical poverty to be living on the bare necessities. Yet what actually happened was that the poverty-stricken who were plundered of the basic necessities were compensated by cheap luxuries.

Spiritual poverty is a more subtle, yet equally devastating, form of poverty. At the time when Orwell wrote the book, there was mass unemployment across England after World War I. What Orwell discovered was that:

[The middle class has] not known actual hunger yet, but more and more of them find themselves floundering in a sort of deadly net of frustration in which it is harder and harder to persuade yourself that you are either happy, active or useful.

To make matters worse, unemployment was perceived as a "disaster which happened to you as an individual" and "for which you were to blame".

In a way, Orwell's insightful study of the poverty which befallen England helps us to better appreciate our current living conditions.

Parting quote

All in all, many thematic ideas were uncovered in this book, but all of them seem to point back to this central idea of suffering. What does it mean to suffer? Why do we need to suffer? Is there meaning to one's suffering?

With that, I shall leave you with a final quote from this book:

The nomad who walks or rides, with his baggage stowed on a camel or an ox-cart, may suffer every kind of discomfort, but at least he is living while he is traveling; whereas for the passenger in an express train or a luxury liner his journey is an interregnum, a kind of temporary death.