Hatred and the Death-Wish in 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying'

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The first five chapters of George Orwell’s ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying' (1936) are about a poor poet - Gordon Comstock - from a non-descript and dying-out "middle middle-class" family in inter-war London. Gordon hates the "money-world"- also the "money-sty" and the "money stink" - were income dictates personal happiness, artistic development, social life, and sexual prospects. Gordon shuns a well-paying job in advertising ("the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced") only to discover that "you do not escape from money merely by being moneyless".

He lives dirty, miserable, and poor. His behavior is becoming increasingly destructive. His poems are rejected by all publishers except by Antichrist, "a middle to highbrow monthly, Socialist in an ill-defined but vehement way" published by a friend, Ravelston.

In general, it gave the impression of being edited by an ardent Nonconformist who had transferred his allegiance from God to Marx, and in doing so had got mixed up with a gang of vers libre poets. This was not really Ravelston's character; merely he was softer-hearted than an editor ought to be, and consequently was at the mercy of his contributors. Practically anything got printed in Antichrist if Ravelston suspected that its author was starving.

The following excerpt is from a conversation between Gordon and Ravelston at a cheap and filthy beer house. I found it horridly funny, and very real.

Excerpt 1

From Chapter V; pages 96-98

'You know, Gordon, it's really time you started reading Marx', said Ravelston, less apologetically than usual, because the vile taste of the beer had annoyed him.

'I'd sooner read Mrs Humphry Ward', said Gordon

'But don't you see, your attitude is so unreasonable. You're always tirading against Capitalism, and yet you won't accept the only possible alternative. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way. One's got to accept either Capitalism or Socialism. There's no way out of it.'

'I tell you I can't be bothered with Socialism. The very thought of it makes me yawn.'

'But what's your objection to Socialism, anyway?'

'There's only one objection to Socialism, and that is that nobody wants it.'

'Oh, surely it's rather absurd to say that!'

'That's to say, nobody who could see what Socialism would really mean.'

'But what would Socialism mean, according to your idea of it?'

'Oh! Some kind of Aldous Huxley Brave New World; only not so amusing. Four hours a day in a model factory, tightening up bolt number 6003. Rations served out in greaseproof paper at the communal kitchen. Community-hikes from Marx Hostel to Lenin Hostel and back. Free abortion-clinics on all the corners. All very well in its way, of course. Only we don't want it.'

Ravelston sighed. Once a month, in Antichrist, he repudiated this version of Socialism. 'Well, what do we want, then?'

'God knows. All we know is what we don't want. That's what's wrong with us nowadays. We're stuck, like Buridan's donkey. Only there are three alternatives instead of two, and all three of them make us spew. Socialism's only one of them.'

'And what are the other two?'

'Oh, I suppose suicide and the Catholic Church.

Ravelston smiled, anticlerically shocked. 'The Catholic Church! Do you consider that an alternative?'

"Well, it's a standing temptation to the intelligentsia, isn't it?'

'Not what I should call the intelligentsia. Though there was Eliot, of course,' Ravelston admitted.

'And there'll be plenty more, you bet. I dare say it's fairly cosy under Mother Church's wing. A bit insanitary, of course - but you'd feel safe there, anyway?'

Ravelston rubbed his nose reflectively. 'It seems to me that's only another form of suicide.'

'In a way. But so's Socialism. At least it's a counsel of despair. But I couldn't commit suicide, real suicide. It's too meek and mild. I'm not going to give up my share of earth to anyone else. I'd want to do in a few of my enemies first.'

Ravelston smiled again. 'And who are your enemies?'

'Oh, anyone with over five hundred a year.'

Additionally, here are three additional excerpts from earlier in the novel. They show Gordon's outlook on his time and place.

Excerpt 2

From Chapter I; page 16

He gazed out at the graceless street. At this moment it seemed to him that in a street like this, in a town like this, every life that is lived must be meaningless and intolerable. The sense of disintegration, of decay, that is endemic in our time, was strong upon him. Somehow it was mixed up with the ad-posters opposite. He looked now with more seeing eyes at those grinning yard-wide faces. After all, there was more there than mere silliness, greed and vul-garity. Roland Butta grins at you, seemingly optimistic, with a flash of false teeth. But what is behind the grin? Desolation, emptiness, prophecies of doom. For can you not see, if you know how to look, that behind that slick self-satisfaction, that tittering fat-bellied triviality, there is nothing but a frightful emptiness, a secret despair? The great death-wish of the modern world. Suicide pacts. Heads stuck in gas-ovens in lonely maisonettes. French letters and Amen Pills. And the reverberations of future wars. Enemy aeroplanes flying over London; the deep threatening hum of the propellers, the shattering thunder of the bombs. It is all written in Roland Butta's face.

More customers coming. Gordon stood back, gentle-manly-servile.

Excerpt 3

From Chapter I; pages 21-22

The reflection of his own face looked back at him from the greyish pane. Gordon Comstock, author of Mice; en l'an trentiesme de son eage, and moth-eaten already. Only twenty-six teeth left. However, Villon at the same age was poxed, on his own showing. Let's be thankful for small mercies.

He watched the ribbon of torn paper whirling, fluttering on the QT Sauce advertisement. Our civilisation is dying. It must be dying. But it isn't going to die in its bed. Presently the aeroplanes are coming. Zoom - whizz - crash! The whole western world going up in a roar of high explosives.

He looked at the darkening street, at the greyish reflection of his face in the pane, at the shabby figures shuffling past. Almost involuntarily he repeated:

'C'est l'Ennui-l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka!'

Money, money! Roland Butta! The humming of the aeroplanes and the crash of the bombs.

Gordon squinted up at the leaden sky. Those aeroplanes are coming. In imagination he saw them coming now; squadron after squadron, innumerable, darkening the sky like clouds of gnats. With his tongue not quite against his teeth he made a buzzing, bluebottle-on-the-window-pane sound to represent the humming of the aeroplanes. It was a sound which, at that moment, he ardently desired to hear.

Excerpt 4

From Chapter V; pages 92-94

But with Gordon it was different. Gordon's income was two pounds a week. Therefore the hatred of modern life, the desire to see our money-civilisation blown to hell bybombs, was a thing he genuinely felt. They were walking southward, down a darkish, meanly decent residential street with a few shuttered shops. From a hoarding on the blank end of a house the yard-wide face of Roland Butta simpered, pallid in the lamplight. Gordon caught a glimpse of a withering aspidistra in a lower window. London! Mile after mile of mean lonely houses, let off in flats and single rooms; not homes, not communities, just clusters of meaningless lives drifting in a sort of drowsy chaos to the grave! He saw men as corpses walking. The thought that he was merely objectifying his own inner misery hardly troubled him. His mind went back to Wednesday afternoon, when he had desired to hear the enemy aeroplanes zooming over London. He caught Ravelston's arm and paused to gesticulate at the Roland Butta poster.

'Look at that bloody thing up there! Look at it, just look at it! Doesn't it make you spew?'

'It's asthetically offensive, I grant. But I don't see that it matters very greatly.'

'Of course it matters-having the town plastered with things like that.'

'Oh, well, it's merely a temporary phenomenon. Capitalism in its last phase. I doubt whether it's worth worrying about.'

'But there's more in it than that. Just look at that fellow's face gaping down at us! You can see our whole civilisation written there. The imbecility, the emptiness, the desolation! You can't look at it without thinking of French letters and machine-guns. Do you know that the other day I was actually wishing war would break out? I was longing for it - praying for it, almost.'

'Of course, the trouble is, you see, that about half the young men in Europe are wishing the same thing.'

'Let's hope they are. Then perhaps it'll happen.'

'My dear old chap, no! Once is enough, surely?'

Gordon walked on, fretfully. "This life we live nowadays! It's not life, it's stagnation, death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses, and the meaningless people inside them! Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting
upright.'

'But where you make your mistake, don't you see, is in talking as if all this was incurable. This is only something that's got to happen before the proletariat take over.'

'Oh, Socialism! Don't talk to me about Socialism.'

'You ought to read Marx, Gordon, you really ought. Then you'd realise that this is only a phase. It can't go on for ever.'

'Can't it? It feels as if it was going on for ever.'

'It's merely that we're at a bad moment. We've got to die before we can be reborn, if you take my meaning?'

'We're dying right enough. I don't see much signs of our being reborn.'

Ravelston rubbed his nose. 'Oh, well, we must have faith, I suppose. And hope.'

'We must have money, you mean,' said Gordon gloomily.

'Money?'

'It's the price of optimism. Give me five quid a week and I'd be a Socialist, I dare say.'

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