Keep the Aspidistra Flying

What It's About

Gordon Comstock is a would-be poet who has deliberately thrown away a promising career in advertising to wage a one-man war against what he calls the "money god" — the entire structure of English middle-class respectability built on financial security. Working in a shabby bookshop and living in genteel poverty, Gordon believes that refusing money is the only way to preserve his integrity as an artist. His crusade puts a constant strain on his relationship with his loyal girlfriend Rosemary and his wealthy, guilt-ridden socialist friend Ravelston, and increasingly tests how much a person can sacrifice for principle before compromise becomes unavoidable.

Key Concepts

The corrosive, all-pervasive power of money and class anxiety in English society; the conflict between artistic integrity and commercial success; a satirical portrait of the advertising industry, which Gordon has renounced; and the aspidistra plant itself, a symbol of the suffocating suburban respectability Gordon is trying to escape.

About the Author

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, an English novelist, essayist and journalist known for his plain prose style and his lifelong opposition to totalitarianism and social injustice. Before becoming a full-time writer, he served as a colonial police officer in Burma and later lived in deliberate poverty in London and Paris, experiences that fed directly into his early fiction.