Review of Wigan Pier essays

Review of Wigan Pier essays This book was about the lives of the unemployed in northern England during the early twentieth century. Orwell also gives a lot of attention to the typical life of a coal miner and his family. He discusses the long hours and horrible conditions that these men face everyday they go to work. He even goes as far as to go down into a coal mine himself to get the experience first hand. In the later part of the book Orwell shifts his focus to the things he found wrong with the Socialists. He touches on the impact Socialists have on each class and how they make it impossible to get out of whatever class you were born into. George Orwell was a journalist and a writer in the early twentieth century. Orwell's goals were to give an accurate description of the life of the working class in Wigan. He also goes on to give his opinion on the rule of Socialists in northern England. The Road to Wigan Pier was written in 1937, but was only published in England at that time. The events and the time period being discussed were current and up to date. Orwell wrote his book as a first-hand experience that could be used as a reliable reference about the working/unemployed class in Wigan. Orwell did not talk to miners to find out what they daily routine was; he experienced it for himself. He was living in the society and was going through the same struggles everyone had to face. In the chapters Orwell goes into detail about the lives of the coal miners I had mixed feeling about his view. At the beginning I thought that he was just taking pieces of facts and pieces of his opinion and combining the two to give a half-accurate report. As I continued to read and saw that he himself went down in to a mine and experienced the work and conditions they actually face, my feelings changed. For him to endure the pain of walking miles hunched over down the mine to the coal face and then breathing the "black air" just to understand what these men go through ...