Down and Out in Paris and London

Summary

Down and Out in Paris and London is George Orwell's first book, a memoir of poverty drawn from his own experience in 1928-29 and his tramping expeditions in England. It was the first book published under the pen name George Orwell. In the first part the narrator, a young Englishman, lives in a cheap hotel in a poor quarter of Paris, the rue du Coq d'Or. When his small savings are stolen, he discovers what poverty really means: the endless calculation of a few francs, the shame of pawning clothes, the boredom, and the hunger that empties the mind. With his Russian friend Boris, a former army officer, he searches for work and finally finds a job as a plongeur, a dishwasher, in the kitchens of a luxury hotel he calls the Hôtel X. There he works seventeen hours a day in heat and filth while the guests upstairs dine in elegance, and he describes the rigid hierarchy of the kitchen, the cooks' pride, and the waiters' contempt for the customers. Later he and Boris work at a new restaurant that never seems ready to open. In the second part the narrator returns to London expecting a job that is delayed for a month, so he lives as a tramp, moving between the 'spikes', the casual wards of workhouses, where tramps may stay one night at a time. He meets Paddy, an Irish tramp, and Bozo, a crippled pavement artist who studies the stars and keeps his self-respect. He describes lodging houses, the Salvation Army shelters, the charity tea and sermon, and the laws that force tramps to keep moving. He ends by arguing that tramps are not monsters but ordinary men made idle by the system, and by promising that he will never again think all tramps drunken scoundrels, nor fail to give a penny to a beggar. The book is vivid and compassionate, though it repeats some of the ethnic prejudices of its time, and its picture of charity work is skeptical. Because US protection runs to the end of 2028, the record paraphrases the Hôtel X kitchens and the London spikes instead of quoting them.

Top Lessons

• The dignity of the poor

  Orwell shows that the poor are not different from anyone else.

• Hidden labor

  Diners never see the kitchens that serve them.

• Charity

  Orwell is skeptical of charity that humiliates.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Hunger, malnutrition, alcoholism and the sanitation of workhouses are described.

• Paris chapters

  The effects of hunger on mind and body.