"Down and out in Paris and London" by Orwell

Subject  > Literature Research Papers  > European Literature

The story of 'Down And Out In Paris And London' deals with the author's experience with tramps and the poverty stricken in Paris and London in the 1920's. He lives with them on equal terms and suffers the same hardships and tribulations. Orwell shows great compassion for the plight of the poor and feels that society is very unfair in their criticism and judgment of the tramps and beggars that roam the streets. He feels that these people are victims of their circumstances. To be belligerent towards tramps is no fairer than to be that way towards invalids and the handicapped, in that they are that way not because they want to be, but because of their circumstances. In ...

... clothes has on one's personality and how they affect how one is perceived. Once one puts on the clothes of a tramp, Orwell discovered, one is put in an entirely different world. To begin with, one feels degraded and shameful and one is treated the same way. People react to you differently and women especially have a strong reaction to a man's clothes. 'When a badly dressed man passes them they shudder away from him with a quite frank movement of disgust, as though he were a dead cat.' (p. 130)Orwell compares the feeling of the first day in tramps' clothes to being in a jail cell saying 'You might feel

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