Book review - Down and out in Paris and London

Down and out in Paris and London - George Orwell 

Having previously read '1984' a classic by author George Orwell, I was very excited to read this book. Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933, is Orwell’s technically-fictional chronicle of penury in two of the great European capitals. The protagonist, more than loosely based on Orwell himself, washes dishes in Paris at the “Hotel X,” tramps from lodging-house to lodging-house in London. A real story of struggles and the effects of living on the poverty line. 

The first half of the book is set in Paris, as Orwell depicts the invisible underclass on french society. Surviving on day by day work and no hope, stuck in a never ending spiral. Orwell made the point first that dishwashers and “tramps”  have absolutely no hope of ever emerging from their desperate situations, not because of laziness or the incapacity to resist blowing all their money on booze and drugs, but because they simply can’t. They live paycheck to paycheck, barely retaining enough money to pay rent and keep themselves fed week by week. A dishwasher, for instance, who typically worked six days a week, sixteen hours a day, hardly has time to spend scoping out the job market or training himself for other, better possibilities.

This was one of the main underlying themes of  the book. Sometimes people can't help it that they are poor and they are stuck in a system, that never allows them to be free and do something different. The rich need the poor, without them who would do the cleaning and menial jobs. The rich manipulating the poor to think thats what they have to do. Another part that shocked me was the persistent pressure to try and live, with every day becoming a struggle just to even eat. Castigated aside as some kind of parasite - i.e. the invisible. 

The second part of the book is set in a grimy London. Being from manchester and seeing countless homeless people on my own streets this was no surprise to read it was no different to then. Orwell tries to humanize the homeless and empathize with their struggles, retelling his own experiences and the characters he met. Starved and forgotten about the homeless of London in their thousands wonder the streets, begging, performing and isolated. People walk past as if they aren't there and the government criminalize them for having nothing. 
This book told a lot of truths and is a fantastic read. Its definitely changed my own view on what homeless people go through and what they are like as people. I will be using this to influence my own project and outcome. 

“It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work'; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable