Why was he the only writer that could describe the misery of the working class...

Why was he the only writer that could describe the misery of the working class, without sounding like a condescending prick? All other socialist writers write like they're dsescribing alien beings who are hopelessly below them in intelligence. But Orwell seems to really empathize with how working class conditions affect the psyche. At the end of the day he still seems them as just normal people. And yet no other socialist writer seems to capture this quality like him.

>The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes — an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level.'

>They have all the leisure in the world; why don’t they sit down and write books? Because to write books you need not only comfort and solitude — and solitude is never easy to attain in a working-class home — you also need peace of mind. You can’t settle to anything, you can’t command the spirit of hope in which anything has got to be created, with that dull evil cloud of unemployment hanging over you.

>She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that’ It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her — understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.

>All other socialist writers write like they're dsescribing alien beings who are hopelessly below them in intelligence
Geez, I wonder why.

Because he had Aspergers Syndrome, the only way to have a chance at examining the world without the influence of pure ideology. A king among spergs, if you will. His kind satisfies a crucial niche among the intellectual progress of humanity.

>In his tramping days, he did domestic work for a time. His extreme politeness was recalled by a member of the family he worked for; she declared that the family referred to him as "Laurel" after the film comedian. With his gangling figure and awkwardness, Orwell's friends often saw him as a figure of fun. Geoffrey Gorer commented "He was awfully likely to knock things off tables, trip over things. I mean, he was a gangling, physically badly co-ordinated young man. I think his feeling [was] that even the inanimate world was against him ..." When he shared a flat with Heppenstall and Sayer, he was treated in a patronising manner by the younger men. At the BBC, in the 1940s, "everybody would pull his leg," and Spender described him as having real entertainment value "like, as I say, watching a Charlie Chaplin movie." A friend of Eileen's reminisced about her tolerance and humour, often at Orwell's expense. Psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald has speculated that Orwell's social and physical awkwardness, limited interests and monotone voice were the result of Asperger syndrome.

Obviously because he actually went there to live with them and see how their lives were.

Unlike tweed-wearing "socialist" malcontents in the middle class who are just full of resentment at not being the ruling class.

>Obviously because he actually went there to live with them and see how their lives were.

While true, it isn't like he was any different to other socialists; he didn't fit in with the working class either, Orwell was hopelessly middle class.

Brown bread is for poofs. Potatoes are completely fine.

Orwell is a faggot. He still sounds incredibly condescending here. Jack London came across as empathising with working class drudgery in Martin Eden, but I'm not sure how much of that book is based on his real working experiences and drinking habits.

>he wasn't different
>even though he wrote accurately about the plight of the working class often to the consternation of the middle class and he critiqued the middle class for not paying attention.

He was different alright. Someone who triggers both the right-wing and the left-wing is saying something truthful nobody wants to hear.

But how do we help the working class?

Orwell was on the autism spectrum. That's what allowed him to punch left and right for being absolute partisan cunts. Few other neurotypical people had that compulsion for altruism, consistency, and righteousness. Nobody told Orwell that politics is just a game and not actually about what ought to be the right way of conducting affairs, so he attracted a lot of needless hate for being intellectually honest throughout his years.

Public education is a travesty, although I doubt it can be fixed at this point.

The thing about "sympathizing with the working class" that will always be inherently wrong is that they're the same shits as other people. I mean, some are nice, some are assholes, some are just neutral people. They're people like anyone else, and they're just as well able to be violent, petty, greedy, self-defeating, stupid, or just plain apathetic. In fact, this is a big problem with a lot of people's so-called "sympathy", sympathy for people in war-zones, for people who are starving, etc., etc. They're just you and everyone around you, the same type of people, placed in different conditions. If you try to ennoble them and raise them to higher living conditions, you'll quickly see that all their suffering hasn't magically ennobled their spirit. They're still people.

"We have to help these people! We have to give them good lives so they can contribute to society!" And then what about people who don't need help, who contribute to society? Look at these people. They're just boring assholes who live for nothing. As a child, you could say I was pretty poor, and this itself very effectively (and thankfully) disillusioned me from the possibility of falling into the sentimental trap when older of glorifying people and their moral character just because they suffer. Sure, there may be some sensitive souls trapped in slums like Orwell describes, but there's also just a lot of "normal" (inasmuch as people are normal) people and even coarse people and assholes. And there's even poor people who are pretty happy so long as they can have TV, cheap and tasty and unhealthy food as Orwell describes, and alcohol and drugs.

Ironically, excessive sympathy for the poor probably makes their plight worse. Without the knowledge that people are crying crocodile tears over them and thinking their lives could be so much better, a lot of them could probably be reconciled to their situations. As it is, however, it constantly being rubbed in that they're poor can lead to anger and sadness. It's also the modern phenomenon today of television and mass media portraying a pretty rich and privileged life as normal (sitcoms and cheesy shows like Full House show really, really sheltered and pretty rich by today's standards families and people), thus further leading to possible depression and discontent and self-pity and anger amongst those who think they don't reach this ridiculous line of prosperity and normalcy mass media has cut for them.

Also, think of religions that suggest being content with poor living conditions, especially Christianity and Buddhism. Sociopaths like Karl Marx used this to suggest "religion is the opium of the people", and socialists in the same vein have similarly generally taken a pessimistic view of the idea of being content with not having much, but really the idea is very sound to me. Sometimes, the problem isn't in one's life but that one has too high expectations.

Better to be educated and misinformed than not educated at all. Though a good amount of kids drop out of high school anyway.

I'm replying mainly because I want you to know someone read your post. But I do want to say that, when rich people give sympathy for the poor, poor people see it as the most ridiculous, fake thing they have ever seen. They loathe it. It's disastrously annoying when someone gives sympathy but doesn't offer anything real, they just act sad for social points.

he's not, it's just that you're paying him disproportionate attention because you've read 5 books and 1984 is one of them

>Why was he the only writer that could describe the misery of the working class, without sounding like a condescending prick?

Three reasons, all of which are true, but which you can accept individually or in combinations as you please:
Because you're a condescending prick yourself, at the same exact frequency. Because he was misanthropic enough that his hatred of his own class led him to make the best job he could of rubbing their noses in other people's unhappiness. Because he was making half of it up, as has since been admitted and uncovered.

>has speculated

No, misanthropic snobbery and sadism did that. Read Heppenstall's The Shooting-Stick.

Said the adolescent.

This.

Ernst Fischer said Karl Marx's assessment of religion as spiritual consolation to the poor wasn't as negative as the condensed opium quote sounds.

Opium is used to relieve terrible pain, after all.

Indeed, if you read the whole thing, it's quite a warm and moving passage. Too many people assume that Marx was against opiates, an unwarranted puritanical assumption which stems from the unexamined Protestant cultural conditioning of too many on the left.

The quote is from Wigan Pier. 1984 is actually his worst book.

Because he wasn't a intellectual who thought of himself as above the working class like Lenin.

The modern Christian can't be ever satisfied by a simple life see: Prosperity Theology.That's what atracts most people to the temples nowadays.

I think that's the issue though. The middle section of Martin Eden, about the laundry, was boring and dry as fuck. Really captured the drudgery of prole life, a bit too well.

>Ironically, excessive sympathy for the poor probably makes their plight worse.
Nigga read Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde. Socialism =/= Charity

Forgot pic

would have been much better off without the zen pencils tier pic, user
did you save that from leftypol? i'd have hoped they had better taste.

i'm being mean
sorry

Here is a different picture, if it makes you feel any better you fucking prick.

That quote, however corny it is to you, shows the very distinct line between the mentality behind charity and leftism. Nigga went on to be a christian socialist anyway.

Qutie frankly i am sick and tired of people mouthing Orwell's criticism of the Left. People tend to forget that while he shat on leftist on his time (like all leftists do desu), he actively fought against right wingers in the Spanish Civil War. Hell right wingers who do that without putting a bullet into their head are massive hypocrites.

*infects you with lice*

The problem is 1984 and Animal Farm get constantly republished and taught in schools, but no one really talks about Homage to Catalonia, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, or any of his lesser-known (to my mind better) works.