List Books Conducive To Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Original Title:	Keep the Aspidistra Flying
ISBN:	0141183721 (ISBN13: 9780141183725)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Gordon Comstock, Rosemary Waterlow, Philip Ravelston, Julia Comstock, Hermione Slater, Mrs Wisbeach, Mr Erskine
Setting:	London, England,1934(United Kingdom)

Keep the Aspidistra Flying Paperback | Pages: 277 pages

Specify About Books Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Title	:	Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Author	:	George Orwell
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 277 pages
Published	:	October 26th 2000 by Penguin Books Ltd (first published April 20th 1936)
Categories	:	Fiction. Classics. European Literature. British Literature. Literature

Interpretation Supposing Books Keep the Aspidistra Flying

London, 1936. Gordon Comstock has declared war on the money god; and Gordon is losing the war. Nearly 30 and "rather moth-eaten already," a poet whose one small book of verse has fallen "flatter than any pancake," Gordon has given up a "good" job and gone to work in a bookshop at half his former salary. Always broke, but too proud to accept charity, he rarely sees his few friends and cannot get the virginal Rosemary to bed because (or so he believes), "If you have no money ... women won't love you." On the windowsill of Gordon's shabby rooming-house room is a sickly but unkillable aspidistra--a plant he abhors as the banner of the sort of "mingy, lower-middle-class decency" he is fleeing in his downward flight. In Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell has created a darkly compassionate satire to which anyone who has ever been oppressed by the lack of brass, or by the need to make it, will all too easily relate. He etches the ugly insanity of what Gordon calls "the money-world" in unflinching detail, but the satire has a second edge, too, and Gordon himself is scarcely heroic. In the course of his misadventures, we become grindingly aware that his radical solution to the problem of the money-world is no solution at all--that in his desperate reaction against a monstrous system, he has become something of a monster himself. Orwell keeps both of his edges sharp to the very end--a "happy" ending that poses tough questions about just how happy it really is. That the book itself is not sour, but constantly fresh and frequently funny, is the result of Orwell's steady, unsentimental attention to the telling detail; his dry, quiet humor; his fascination with both the follies and the excellences of his characters; and his courageous refusal to embrace the comforts of any easy answer.

Rating About Books Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Ratings: 3.89 From 15029 Users | 1069 Reviews

Evaluate About Books Keep the Aspidistra Flying

I enjoyed this one of Orwells, written in 1936, and set in 1930s London. Gordon is a character set up to be pitied and despised, but who also grudgingly earns some respect, for sticking to his philosophy - no matter how theoretical and impractical it is.There is no doubt the novel is deep into description - and for me that was what made it, the descriptive 1930s London, the grimy and impoverished existence of Gordon Comstock, the mundanities of every-day life in a going nowhere job, a struggling

I have not sympathized with a protagonist quite so much in a good while.Gordon Comstock is turning thirty, has no money, works in a bookshop, is a failing poet, and refuses to take a "good" job because of his socialist ideals and his war against the money-god, and it's chief symbol: the aspidistra that sits in the window of every British middle-class home. Kind of like a less talk-the-talk Frank Wheeler. The hideous grimness of Gordon's soul-destroying poverty, the way he sinks into inevitable

It's a tiresome book with a bitter, complaining main character with artistic ambitions. The snapshot capture of the time and place made it worth reading."The most difficult times were the 1800s, when many Victorian homes began to have indoor lighting powered by gas. Gas lights produced toxic fumes that induced headache and nausea, blackened ceilings, discolored curtains, corroded metals and left a layer of soot on every flat surface. Flowers and most houseplants wilted. Only two particularly

Oh, Orwell, thank you.It's no secret that Animal Farm is one of my favourite books. Not only because it is a genius piece of the literary canon, but also because it the book that helped me crash down the wall between seeing classics as enemy and seeing their immense merit. It's been a long while since I read Animal Farm, (it was back in 2011), and while I enjoyed 1984 and some of Orwell's essays, I admit to not knowing if he'd be able to blow me away as strongly as he did with Animal Farm. I

Slowly but surely working my way to Orwell's work and I'm have a mighty splendid time doing so. This book had me LOL several times. I can't wait to continue my author exploration of this genius works.

If you have seen the updates you may already realize that I was not overly-keen on Gordon Comstock. Nevertheless the liking or disliking of the hero or heroine of a novel evidently does not in itself negate the quality of the writing and it is certainly true that this novel is a really powerful description of the blanching effect of poverty on the colour of life, of the crippling struggle that the poor underwent between the wars and the pitiful descriptions of scrimping and saving and the

The readers response to Gordon Comstocks behaviour will depend upon whether the reader has ever tried to live a self-sufficient life free from bourgeois respectability, or seriously pursued an artistic vocation with stubborn single-mindedness. Orwells novel is pretty one-track plot-wisewhat happens when a person renounces money and its interminable grip?but Comstocks obsessive pursuit is a societal conundrum of universal proportions and makes for a frustrating and bone-deep trip to the depths.