The Wykehamist
is pulled back into its orbit? To understand his‘ surrender’, we must consider the broader historical and personal pressures Orwell places upon him.
Firstly, we must look at the macroeconomic landscape of the late 1930s. As Britain began its slow, agonising recovery from the Great Depression and turned its eyes towards preparing for war, a sense of national mobilisation began to take root. In this environment, social uplift was not just a personal goal, but as an inevitability of the state. Orwell chooses to portray this within the text as an inescapable gravitational pull. The‘ Money-God’ is not just a deity of greed; it is a deity of momentum. Gordon’ s desire to remain in the gutter is a static rebellion in a world that is beginning to move again.
Secondly, and more intimately, Orwell illustrates that marital pressures and social expectations are overwhelmingly more significant in influencing the decision-making of the labourer than any abstract financial incentive. Gordon’ s relationship with Rosemary is the crucible in which his ideology is melted down. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, Gordon’ s‘ war’ suddenly appears not as a heroic stand, but as a selfish whim. The reality of a child requires a‘ cage’ to keep it safe. The‘ feminine wiles’ Gordon once feared are revealed to be nothing more than the primordial urge for security and the biological necessity of the hearth.
In the final chapters, Gordon’ s return to the advertising firm, the‘ New Albion’— a name loaded with nationalistic irony— is his ultimate capitulation. He returns to the world of slogans and‘ selling your soul’, not because he has changed his mind about the rot of capitalism, but because the alternative is a lonely, sterile death. His final act of buying an aspidistra for his new flat is the white flag in his long war. He accepts that to live in society is to serve the Money-God in some capacity. Orwell leaves us with the uncomfortable realisation that while the‘ Money-God’ may be a tyrant, the‘ decency’ of the Aspidistra is the only thing keeping the darkness of the 1930s at bay.
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