Keep the Aspidistra Flying
“The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr. McKechnie’s bookshop, Gordon - Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already - lounged across the table, pushing a fourpenny packet of Player’s Weights open and shut with his thumb.” (3)
These first sentences of this relatively unknown novel by George Orwell include a number of threads in the story of a no-longer-quite-so-young poet who disdains the middle class values characterized by the plain plant of the title. There is his age: not yet middle-aged, but perhaps already past the prime of his life, which is soon confirmed by the phrase ‘moth-eaten already,’ a description driven home by two more mentions over the next few pages. We are in a bookshop, which is an important part of Gordon’s identity, and yet of which he will soon seem to have grown somewhat tired. There is his family status, ‘last member,’ suggesting that he may indeed be the last, later confirmed by the fact that he is unmarried. There are the Player’s Weights, the cigarettes with which the rest of the chapter shows him to be fairly well obsessed, and the fact that they are worth fourpenny. Money, and the privilege it affords or denies, is of great concern to Gordon, and the war which he has waged upon this modern God sets him apart from his literary friend Ravelstein, his girlfriend Rosemary, and as evident in some of the grimmer passages in the story, himself.
“He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; so cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself – to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground. He liked to think about the lost people, the under ground people, tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself for ever.” (203-204)
From his conversations with Ravelstein and Rosemary it is clear that Gordon is actually on to something here. Depriving himself of a decent paying job, cigarettes, clothes, and even food, he names as fools all those middle class troglodytes who content themselves with creature comforts and the aspidistra signaling their complacency. Neither one of his friends disputes whether the judgment he passes on the world is correct, but for them his attempts at financial abstinence are Quixotic and destined for ruin, however right the cause. Ravelstein the Socialist finds Gordon’s tirades against the god of mammon discomfiting, but a kind of truth-telling as well. Rosemary loves him because he is principled, never mind that these very principles bar them from enjoying even the most rudimentary happiness. All this is hammered home quite often and would grow tedious were it not for Orwell’s masterful descriptions of objects, people and abstractions alike, and his nearly pitch-perfect ability to accomplish exactly what he sets out to accomplish. The portrait of Gordon’s meanness while cadging from his sister Julia is particularly galling because of the awareness he brings to their encounter, and a conscience that leads him to self-loathing rather than self-correction. Moreover, the parallels drawn between Julia’s bargain hunting at night and Gordon’s carousing show the utter pointlessness of all those privations on his own terms. It may be a corrupt world, but it’s the only world there is, and those who make a go of it in the best way they can are able to claim a success more moral than Gordon ever can, living on the fringe and trying in vain to break free from the very ‘system’ offering a chance to live a life of virtue. Like the knight of doleful countenance, it is this life of virtue to which he is unable to remain blind, however much he tries.
“Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler.” (239)
These first sentences of this relatively unknown novel by George Orwell include a number of threads in the story of a no-longer-quite-so-young poet who disdains the middle class values characterized by the plain plant of the title. There is his age: not yet middle-aged, but perhaps already past the prime of his life, which is soon confirmed by the phrase ‘moth-eaten already,’ a description driven home by two more mentions over the next few pages. We are in a bookshop, which is an important part of Gordon’s identity, and yet of which he will soon seem to have grown somewhat tired. There is his family status, ‘last member,’ suggesting that he may indeed be the last, later confirmed by the fact that he is unmarried. There are the Player’s Weights, the cigarettes with which the rest of the chapter shows him to be fairly well obsessed, and the fact that they are worth fourpenny. Money, and the privilege it affords or denies, is of great concern to Gordon, and the war which he has waged upon this modern God sets him apart from his literary friend Ravelstein, his girlfriend Rosemary, and as evident in some of the grimmer passages in the story, himself.
“He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; so cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself – to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground. He liked to think about the lost people, the under ground people, tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself for ever.” (203-204)
From his conversations with Ravelstein and Rosemary it is clear that Gordon is actually on to something here. Depriving himself of a decent paying job, cigarettes, clothes, and even food, he names as fools all those middle class troglodytes who content themselves with creature comforts and the aspidistra signaling their complacency. Neither one of his friends disputes whether the judgment he passes on the world is correct, but for them his attempts at financial abstinence are Quixotic and destined for ruin, however right the cause. Ravelstein the Socialist finds Gordon’s tirades against the god of mammon discomfiting, but a kind of truth-telling as well. Rosemary loves him because he is principled, never mind that these very principles bar them from enjoying even the most rudimentary happiness. All this is hammered home quite often and would grow tedious were it not for Orwell’s masterful descriptions of objects, people and abstractions alike, and his nearly pitch-perfect ability to accomplish exactly what he sets out to accomplish. The portrait of Gordon’s meanness while cadging from his sister Julia is particularly galling because of the awareness he brings to their encounter, and a conscience that leads him to self-loathing rather than self-correction. Moreover, the parallels drawn between Julia’s bargain hunting at night and Gordon’s carousing show the utter pointlessness of all those privations on his own terms. It may be a corrupt world, but it’s the only world there is, and those who make a go of it in the best way they can are able to claim a success more moral than Gordon ever can, living on the fringe and trying in vain to break free from the very ‘system’ offering a chance to live a life of virtue. Like the knight of doleful countenance, it is this life of virtue to which he is unable to remain blind, however much he tries.
“Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler.” (239)
posted by Quin Finnegan at 7:55 PM
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