This is a Powerpoint about research into the codes and conventions of a film ...
Journal of Literature and Art Studies Vol 4. Issue 11 2014
1.
2. Journal of Literature
and Art Studies
Volume 4, Number 11, November 2014 (Serial Number 36)
David Publishing Company
www.davidpublishing.com
PublishingDavid
4. Journal of Literature
and Art Studies
Volume 4, Number 11, November 2014 (Serial Number 36)
Contents
Literature Studies
In Quest of “Answers” in the Colonial Sands: A Comparative Study of Waliullah and
Camus’ “Absurd” Protagonists 867
Sanyat Sattar, Abu Saleh Md. Rafi
George Orwell’s Non-linear Narrative in The Road To Wigan Pier 872
Bechir Chaabane
Differences in Values Between Mother and Daughter in Cord 891
LIU Xi, MA Wen-ying
James Salter’s Pilots and Wingmen, Then and Now 895
David Kirk Vaughan
Rhetoric and Meaning in Poetry: The Case of Zambia 902
Moffat Moyo
Revisiting the Myth of Irishness and Heroism—An Analysis of W.B. Yeats’ The Green Helmet 911
Joanna Zadarko
Hypothetical Earlier Dating for The Passionate Pilgrim and First Folio 916
W. Ron Hess
Marie Corelli’s The Secret Power in Bengali Rendering: Translation, Indianisation and
Cultural Criss-crossing 941
Pritha Kundu
Exiles Turn Lemons Into Lemonade: Multiethnic Poets of the US Crossing Borders 951
Mais Qutami
“Eye Caught by Another Eye”: Locating Experience in Nadine Gordimer’s The Lying Days 965
Laura Giovannelli
5. Art Studies
The Social Construction of City: Taipei in Human Condition 981
Chia-ching Lin, Feng-chia Li
Special Research
A Re-investigation of the Concept of Word Classes Through a Categorization Approach 990
Osondu C. Unegbu
Constructing a Local Folk-belief Knowledge System: A Case Study on Xiangtou in
Hebei Province, China 1000
LI Xiang-zhen
Common Core State Standards: What’s Next? 1007
Rose Campbell, Kirk Gavin
6. Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836
November 2014, Vol. 4, No. 11, 867-871
In Quest of “Answers” in the Colonial Sands: A Comparative
Study of Waliullah and Camus’ “Absurd” Protagonists
Sanyat Sattar
Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abu Saleh Md. Rafi
Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Syed Waliullah (1922-1971) and Albert Camus (1913-1960) are two distinct writers from two different continents.
These writers have interesting commonness, especially in two of their novels—Chander Amabasya (Night of No
Moon), by Walilullah and The Outsider by Camus. The protagonists in both of these novels, Arif Ali and Meursault
respectively, suffer from existentialist crisis, mainly fueled by the impacts of the tarnished history of colonialism
and the aftermaths. Even though the stories of the these protagonists take place almost half way round the world in
entirely different settings, the impacts and facades of the crisis are strikingly similar. This paper is a comparative
study of soul-searching Arif Ali and Meursault.
Keywords: Existentialism, colonialism, postcolonialism, absurdity, meaninglessness, death
Introduction
When on a moonlit night in a mundane Bengali village, Arif Ali, a poor young school teacher discovers a
half naked body of a strangled woman in the bamboo groove, a series of questions begins to plague him: Who
killed that woman—why was she killed—had the life of the poor woman of no value—and so forth. The entire
novel runs on these questions where Arif Ali suffers from a terrible internal war of choices and that puts him
under the clutches of danger. In a Kafkaesque manner, Syed Waliullah reveals the fear, uncertainty, and mental
tension of the protagonist Arif Ali in his novel Chander Amabasya (1964) as Arif Ali proceeds along the
inescapable path to the moral responsibility.
The novel is written in the context of post 1947 East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). After the partition of the
Subcontinent, this territory falls into the clutches of neo-colonization. The middle class becomes the worst victim
in this process as they are doubly colonized by the high-educated-class of Bengali society powered by the
Pakistani hegemony. Being manipulated by the name of “religious unity”, the middle class realizes that they have
actually been suppressed politically, economically, and culturally. And when their existential crisis swells, they
feel the necessity of having a separate national identity. This awareness successfully results into the Bengali
language movement of 1952. At that time a good number of writers, journalists, teachers start emerging from this
middle class as a reactionary protest, but in the end of the decade they again are maneuvered as the “paid servant”
in that hegemonic interpellation. In Chander Amabasya Arif Ali feels the affinity with the romantic ideas of the
Sanyat Sattar, Ph.D., associate professor & Chair, Department of English, Jahangirnagar University.
Abu Saleh Md. Rafi, M.A., lecturer, Department of English, Daffodil International University.
DAVID PUBLISHING
D
7. IN QUEST OF “ANSWERS” IN THE COLONIAL SANDS868
middle class. Yet when the stark reality intervenes, the romantic ideas shatter. Placing Arif Ali as a tour guide in
the changing socio-political statuesque of the Subcontinent, this paper aims to explore his existential crisis going
beyond the national boundaries. In this connection, this paper collaborates Albert Camus’ The Outsider (1942), to
find how Arif Ali represents the recurring feature of existential crisis is equally reflected in Meursault, the
protagonist of Camus’ The Outsider offering historical and socio-political commentary of people of Bengal and
Algerian societies respectively where the ambivalent relationship of colonizers and colonies is obvious.
Arif Ali in The Crisis of Absurdity
The entirely bleak and dark setting of the novel Chander Amabasya represents the afflicted society of 1940s
when one day Karim Majhi, a poor boatman, had to run away owing to financial dearth, his deserted wife being
killed in the bamboo groove for unknown reason and the protagonist, Arif Ali, had to face the death warrant even
for not being responsible of the murder. In the background of the partition of India and Pakistan Arif Ali’s life
was also crucially parted away from any normal aspirations of life. He was forced to drop out his school, leave his
mother alone in the village becoming an in-house lodging teacher at the households of Dada Shaheb, the powerful
religious authority of the village. Though he realizes that Karim Majhi’s wife was killed by Qadir, the son of
Dada Shaheb, he does not dare to render the murderer, not only because of his financial dependency on the family,
but also for Dada Shaheb’s manipulative religious dogma that announces Qadir as a Sufi. Qadir is a mute, aimless
character, who apparently looks drowsy at his every single appearances. Yet he gains the recognition of being a
“rebel” by the superstitious villagers, although nobody knows what he is rebelling against. Dada Shaheb, with his
eyes closed declares quietly, “How would ordinary people understand the rebellion of a dervish?” (Walliullah,
2006, p. 60).
As a matter of fact, this was the actual picture of postcolonial Bangladesh during 1940s, when Dada
Shaheb-like hegemonic powers were corrupting religion to be benefitted by enforcing false beliefs among the
common people. In such socio-political setting, a renaissance man like Arif Ali is confused with everything. And
the naked dead body seems to be triggering the inner questions more vividly. Is religion truly the space where
sanity lies? Or is it just another weapon of exercising corruption? What do the high-sounding ideas of love,
patriotism, sacrifice mean? Or are these just as meaningless as religion appears? What does education mean if the
middle class is to “obey” their masters? All such thoughts drift in the mind of Arif Ali. Sometimes a vague
sympathy rises in his heart for Qadir, imagining that Qadir might have had a love affair with that dead woman.
Arif’s idealistic philosophy keeps him acknowledging stark reality and he even thinks of forgiving the murderer
he knows. On the top of that, the villain of the novel, Qadir, attempts to convince him by telling that it was a mere
accident and he also threatens Arif Ali not to disclose what he saw in the bamboo groove unless he wants to die
himself. But Arif Ali’s conscience keeps continuously knocking him. Finally he reveals everything to the police,
knowing that something sinister will happen to him soon. Arif’s psychology is the picture—perfect
representation of contemporary ideology of the middle class common people in the society who are exiled in fear,
helplessness, inferiority complex, but at the same time remain responsible, self righteous and audacious to tell the
truth. The absurdity lies in the fact that everything seems bleak, meaningless and confusing as there is nothing to
do, but to accept the reality. Hence, this young teacher accepts this vague conclusion that no matter who is
punished, it hardly matters to him anymore—
8. IN QUEST OF “ANSWERS” IN THE COLONIAL SANDS 869
What difference would it make as to who got punished as the meaning of the punishment would never reach the dead
young woman any more. That was not why there should be a punishment. If the young teacher mistakenly brought the
punishment on himself, if he himself were punished for the death of the young woman, then it would certainly reach its
goal. (Walliullah, 2006, p. 150)
Arif Ali Versus Albert Camus
Interestingly, Albert Camus’ personal life has striking similarities with the fictional character of Arif Ali.
Due to his family’s extreme poverty, Camus also had to work a series of odd jobs to support his education at the
University of Algiers. However, he had to drop out of the school because of the severe attack of tuberculosis. His
writing was greatly influenced by the illness and poverty he faced during his youth. But what affected his inner
psyche the most was the horrors of Nazi regime and the evil consequences of the World War II that shattered the
pre-war values of love, romanticism, optimism, prosperity, and hope. Camus and many other writers of that time,
propounded the philosophy of absurdity of life, where life is meaningless and ends in
meaninglessness—something that Arif Ali equally projects.
Meursault, The Outsider
Camus published his first novel The Outsider in 1942, in which the protagonist Meursault brilliantly
emerges as the spokesman of Camus’ absurdist worldview. He is an emotionally detached, morally bankrupt and
spiritually sterile young man who is unable to reconcile with the past belief and also unwilling to accept those of
the mainstream society. The romantic idea of war and patriotism, the shattered philosophy of life and religion, the
lust and financial strings with the idea of love—all these have literally turned Meursault into the “outsider”, for
which he creates his own set of rules, and lives them unsympathetically. From his offhand sexual intercourse with
Marie on the day after his mother’s funeral, to his friendship with a violent pimp, to his needless murder of an
Arab man whom he does not even know, projects himself as an absurdist. The trial of Mersault, however, is even
more absurd. During the pre-trial hearings, the magistrate harasses Mersault about his religious belief while
Mersault indicates that he is an atheist. The magistrate overreacts waving a silver crucifix in his face and calls him
the “antichrist”. During the trial, the audience appears to be more interested in the fact that Mersault did not
grieve at his mother’s funeral and made love to Marie on the day after the funeral than the fact that he has killed a
man.
Here, the colonial history of Algeria needs to be pointed, as it reflects the mindset of the audience at the trail
scene. Algeria was a colony of France and by 1940’s, Algiers, the city in which The Outsider is set, was a French
territory (it is worth mentioning here that the time setting of Waliullah’s Chander Amabasya is also the 40s). In
that colonial world, the French were considered superior to the Arabs and Arabs were considered as camel
breading nomads, more suitable as slaves than anything else (Horowitz, 2006, p. 55). Thus in The Outsider the
unknown Arab, remains “unknown” without any story and becomes the peculiarly unpleasant example of both
racist and sexual exploitation. Horowitz emphasizes:
Whereas the majority of readers will see the failure to refer to the Arab’s murder in the novel’s second half as the
result of Meursault’s “solar” conditioning, which thus absolves him of premeditated intent to kill, other readers will come
to see in such silence Camus’s own [...] a silence that is thereby a sort of hegemony-in-narrative. The sleight of hand
accorded the murder of the Arab throughout the second half is seen as Camus’ own dismissal of the murder and preceding
violence. (Horowitz, 2006, p. 55)
9. IN QUEST OF “ANSWERS” IN THE COLONIAL SANDS870
From a postcolonial perspective, Camus’ name generates a systematic nullification of Arab characters as
evident in The Outsider. Meursault may “officially” be on trial for killing a man, but he is in fact on trial for his
character, and it is for this character that he is convicted. Being a non-Arab, a representative of colonizer’s
community, Meursault’s killing a colonized Arab was a minor offense, but not obeying the colonial customs as
being part of the group of colonizers and not acting as a true Christian, was apparently more offensive and
punishable crime. When Meursault himself says he has been convinced of his own guilt, he is probably not
talking about murder at all. But it is an absurd sentence for a man who truly does not view himself as a criminal:
“I was sure of myself, sure about everything, Sure of my present life and of the death that was coming [...] I’d
been right, I was still right, I was always right” (Camus, 2000, p. 130).
The Affinities of Absurdity
From the comparative study attempted on Syed Waliullah’s Chander Amabasya in conjunction with Albert
Camus’ The Outsider, this paper finds that both of the protagonists are in search for the answers of all the
“meanings” of the signs and symbols of the clueless life. Life is seemingly a riddle and none of these characters
are able to find the proper answer to anything.
The incongruous colonial history of the Subcontinent or in the African continent added with all numerous
other concomitant of war fuels the absurdity in the fundamental reasoning of living in the mindset of Arif Ali and
Meusault, who feel lost and aimless. By absurdity they try to escape from their traditional romantic ideas of living.
Although from postcolonial perspective, Meursault stands as the colonizer, when Arif shares the experiences of
being the colonized, their internalized emotional suffering is somewhat similar. In their individual social
discrepancies, Arif Ali and Mersault begin the journey towards awareness, but inevitably encounter existentialist
crisis, which stimulate them to instigate introspective thoughts. Meursault experiences existentialism throughout
the novel, because he is detached from almost everybody. This detachment causes him to go through traumatic
experiences, leading up to the end of the novel, where he comes to realize what kind of a life he has been living.
Meursault can be considered as a strange character, who is looking for the meaning in life, yet at the same time
abandoning it, and embracing apathy.
Unlike Meursault, Arif Ali needlessly involves himself with the odd turn of events in his life. When Qadir
wanted his help to peter out the dead body, Arif could have rejected it. But he feels no reaction in his mind; rather
he thinks some indomitable force pushing him towards the concluding scene of life. Even he cannot not
understand what Qadir expects him to do: “It was not possible for him to distinguish truth from untruth, the
common from uncommon, right from wrong any more’ which creates a complete absurd situation” (Walliullah,
2006, p. 90). Incorporating Qadir to evacuate the dead body and then complaining to the police against Qadir
makes the circumstances even more absurd that intensifies Arif Ali’s existential crisis. In the end of both Chander
Amabasya and The Outsider neither Mersault nor Arif Ali’s life gets a rational meaning or order. They have
troubles dealing with their individual history against the national, although they continuously struggle to
rationalize their nihilistic ideologies. This struggle to find meaning where none exists is what the existentialists
call, “the absurd”. So strong is their desire to acquire the meaning of life that they dismiss out of hand the idea that
there is nothing to be found. When they realize the meaninglessness of their existence in that religiously occupied
“absurd” society, they start living in the moment accepting death as the ultimate, yet absurd conclusion of life,
10. IN QUEST OF “ANSWERS” IN THE COLONIAL SANDS 871
through which they try to liberate themselves from the unattained pile of questions beneath their minds.
Conclusion
Growing up in the dawn of French colonization in Algeria or in the dusk of British empire in Bengal; both
Meursault and Arif Ali indulge their personal history against the national history that interrogates the
protagonists’ existence in the realm of sufferings. Existentialism, the philosophy that mankind is entirely free and
therefore responsible for their own actions, is prevalent in The Outsider and Chander Amabasya from each
writers’ cultural perspectives. There is also a concern with death and its inevitability in both novels. The writers
involved their protagonists facing ethical dilemmas in the face of their realization that life is absurd and that it has
no purpose in the world where there is no God, no caring, no love, and ultimately no meaning beyond death. This
is where the cruel history wins and the colonized Arif Ali unites with colonizer Meursault, and none seems happy.
References
Aldridge, A. O. (1969). Comparative literature: Matter and method. Chicago: University of Illinois Press Urbana, IL.
Bassnett, S. (1993). Comparative literature: A critical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Camus, A. (2000). The outsider. New York: Penguin.
Guillen, C. (1993). The challenges of comparative literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Horowitz, L. K. (2006). Of women and Arabs: Sexual and racial polarization in Camus. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194734
Rafi, A. S. M. (2012). The comparative nature in comparative literature: A case-study of some major Bengali literary works in
conjunction of other national literatures. Bangladesh Research Foundation Journal, 1, 89.
Waliullah, S. (2009). Chander Amabasya (8th ed.). Dhaka: Nouroze.
Walliullah, S. (2006). Night of No Moon. In A. Dil (Trans.). Dhaka: WritersInk.
11. Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836
November 2014, Vol. 4, No. 11, 872-890
George Orwell’s Non-linear Narrative in The Road To Wigan Pier
Bechir Chaabane
Preparatory Institute for Engineering Studies of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia
Sfax University, Sfax, Tunisia
Orwell’s text The Road to Wigan Pier, henceforth referred to as RWP, is problematic due to the ambiguity of its
status as a literary genre. The text is subversive on many levels, namely on the level of form. In order to show some
aspects of the author’s challenge of the conventional norms and methods of literary writing, a comparison between
the writer’s original diary of the journey to the industrial North of England, the main site of the coal mines, and the
present book could be of great import. This reveals the author’s genuine intellectual ability to manipulate and
rearrange the events and scenes of the story on the discourse level. The author’s manipulation and rearrangement of
the story (the journey), events and scenes, clearly reveals his potential literary creativity and imagination. Orwell
has deployed many strategies to fulfil this purpose. Each strategy is actually a contribution to the author’s overall
argument and at the same time it constitutes a further aspect of subversion. The first aspect of subversion lies on the
level of form itself. The form of the book is effectively very challenging. Contrary to the conventional view of the
fictional novel, the study of Orwell’s text based on Gérard Genette’s model reveals his challenge of the basic
novelistic parameters. The novelistic ingredients such as setting, characterisation, and plot development have been
treated in a subverting way. Though not totally discarded, they have been manipulated for the purpose of the
author’s general argument, which is Socialism. For instance, characters in the novel are treated as types, that is,
representatives of their class. Besides, the order of scenes and events has been rearranged for the purpose of
foregrounding representative scenes like the description of the Brookers’ lodging-house. The author’s treatment of
the material of the text is primarily based on his personal experience as an outside observer during his journey to the
North. Therefore, the exploration of the novel from a structuralist perspective based on Genette’s model does not
merely aim at the pure application of some literary and critical approaches to Orwell’s text. This may be misleading
since the investigation may fall in superficiality and simplicity. But the strategy deployed is actually a further
contribution to the author’s general argument and a manifestation of the novel’s status as a creative and subversive
text.
Keywords: literariness, fictionality, temporality, non-linearity, defamiliarization, structuralism, formalism,
socialism
Introduction
The notion of fictionality and its relation to the concept of literariness has a crucial significance in literature.
Bechir Chaabane, Ph.D. candidate, Preparatory Institute for Engineering Studies of Sfax; Faculty of Letters, Arts and
Humanities, Sfax University.
DAVID PUBLISHING
D
12. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 873
In fact, the fictional status of a literary work has been a controversial issue among literary theorists and critics for
a long period of time. The polemical nature of a literary work’s fictionality and literariness, namely, George
Orwell’s book The Road to Wigan Pier, has been the subject of much debate. This book is actually very
problematic. The first problem it raises is that it was published in 1937 by Victor Gollancs (The Left Book Club)
who commissioned Orwell to visit areas of mass-unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire—the northern
industrial areas of England. Second, the book is a literary work taught as part of the literature programme in
English departments. Third, the book is considered as nonfiction. In fact, Malcolm Bradbury classifies it as
nonfiction in The Modern British Novel (p. 237). Finally, it may belong to literary journalism, especially that
George Orwell is known as a journalist, essayist, and novelist. Crick (1992) in George Orwell: A life poses the
problem as follows:
The difficulty is that the whole documentary genre of the 1930s dwells in the borderlands between fact and fiction,
sometimes clearly on one side of the line, like Down and Out in Paris and London, sometimes clearly on the other, like
Homage to Catalonia; but occasionally like The Road to Wigan Pier, parts of the book straddle the border ambiguously.
(p. 288)
The first text is considered as a documentary and factual work while the second one is classified as fictional
and imaginative. However, the status of the third, that is, The Road to Wigan pier is ambiguous. In fact, there are
different attitudes towards the status of this text. For instance, Fowler (1995) in The Language of Orwell states
that: “…in his descriptive writing, even treating as a concrete material subject such as an industrial town, Orwell
is definitely a literary rather than a documentary writer” (p. 86). Orwell is not only a literary writer but also a
political one who is aware of the important issues of that particular historical stage in the 1930s. Crick (1992),
talking about Orwell’s dilemma, similar to the other writers at that time, states that “He still was not sure where
he stood, but he was sure that the main dilemmas expressed themselves in political terms” (p. 277). Finally,
Hunter (1984) argues that “When Orwell moves to The Road to Wigan Pier he returns to documentary narrative
and to a first person narrator” (p. 46). She also adds that “One important aspect he has learned to make obvious is
that the differences between fiction and documentary, whatever else, are not primarily those between truth and
falsity” (p. 46). Therefore, these diverging views reveal the problematic status of this text.
The previous statements lead to a paradox. These are seemingly contradictory statements about the text,
hence the following questions. What is literature as opposed to non-literature? In other words, what may the
distinctive features of a literary text be and what are the border lines between literature and non-literature?
However, the critic Williams tackles the problem in a completely different way. Williams (1984) argues in
his book entitled Orwell that:
Nothing is clearer, as we look into the work as a whole, than that this conventional division is secondary. The key
problem, in all this work, is the relation between fact and fiction: an uncertain relation which is part of the whole crisis of
being a writer. (p. 41)
Williams further explains that the rigid distinction, or conventional dualism, between factual/documentary
and fictional/imaginative is based on “a naïve definition of the real world, and then a naïve separation of it from
the observation and imagination of men” (p. 41).
Therefore, critics such as Williams claim that any separation between factual and fictional or between
13. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER874
documentary and imaginative causes much harm to literature and obscures many problems of literary writing (p.
42). Rather than division and separation, the association between the imaginative and documentary works is the
most salient feature of Orwell’s writings in the 1930s. That is why Orwell views the problem, “more than a mere
formal one, but rather as a problem of social relations” (Orwell, 1984, p. 42). Based on this premise, a
redefinition of fictionality, which will be an alternative to the conventional common belief, should be readily
advanced. Our thesis statement is that fictionality should not be defined in terms of lack or absence of context, but
as an interaction between text and context. Thus, no discourse should be dissociated from its specific context.
This conception of fictionality in its close relation to literariness has made of The Road to Wigan Pier a
subversive novel both on the levels of form and content.
This problem could be tackled from different angles, but the strategy in this paper consists exclusively in
defining literature from a formalist perspective. Russian Formalism and especially Jakobson’s Structuralist
Poetics have greatly contributed to the study of literary texts and their presumed inherent formal features which
make them distinct from other non-literary genres. Despite the Formalists’ code-centred approach which has
isolated the literary work from its social dimension, the structuralist mode of text analysis will be applied to
Orwell’s text to reveal its literariness as well as its author’s potential literary ability to manipulate linguistic tools
for his own purposes. That is why form should not be completely discarded in the study of any literary text such
as RWP.
The purpose of this research is to advance a conception of fictionality according to which the fictionality of
Orwell’s narrative discourse can be defined not solely in terms of truth-falsity criteria, but mainly in terms of its
interactive and communicative effect in social reality. Orwell’s interaction with his specific socio-political
context has encoded in the text certain ideological attitudes which will be decoded through the process of
interpretation. Therefore, the research will reveal what specific analytic tools can be deployed, how they are used,
and for what purpose(s).
Table 1
The Elements of a Structuralist Mode of Text Analysis
Categories and strategies
Temporal structure
moment of narration
order
duration
frequency
Mood/focalization
Conjecturing-generalizing
Exaggeration-mitigation
Juxtaposition
Augmentation
Voice
- initial narrator
- narrator’s splitting process
° younger narrator
° older narrator
° bourgeois Socialist narrator
The analysis of George Orwell’s text The Road To Wigan Pier (RWP) will be essentially explored from a
structuralist perspective with special emphasis on Genette’s model to show that it is a non-linear narrative. This
task exclusively consists in the study of temporality in the text, as a subversive tool, with its four constitutive
elements, namely, the categories of the moment of narration, order, duration, and frequency (see Table 1). The
14. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 875
general purpose of this analysis, which is based on the aforementioned approach, is to present more validity to the
thesis proposed in this research paper.
Findings and Discussion
Though there are differences between Proust’s A La recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) and
Orwell’s RWP, this strategy consists in the deployment of a detailed formal analysis of Orwell’s text with
particular focus on its temporal structure. This method, although based on the conventional criteria of a narrative,
may have the essential justification to permit an accurate determination of the points on which such a text exceeds
such norms. Therefore, the aim of this investigation is to show the extent to which this creative text has deviated
from the fixed standards of a narrative, to show its complexity, hence its literariness and fictionality.
Gérard Genette’s model applied to Proust’s A la recherche du temp perdu (In Search of Lost Time) will be
adopted as the approach which best lends itself to the structural analysis of Orwell’s book RWP. Temporality and
its different categories constitute the fields of study as well as the levels of definition of Orwell’s narrative text.
Therefore, the analysis of this non-linear narrative discourse consists in the study of the relationships among the
original diary, the narrative text and narration.
Temporal Analysis of the Text
One of the crucial features of a text’s literariness is its temporal duality. This duality is indicated by the
discordance in the relationship between the order of the story, diegesis, and that of the narrative. That is why, in
order to study the temporal structure in Orwell’s narrative, it is essential to measure and identify the reference
marks of these narrative anachronies or what Genette calls “forms of discordance”.
The first temporal segment in the opening chapter of RWP is situated late enough in the life of the hero. The
first time in the narrative order is actually not the first one in the diegetic order, that is, in the author’s diary of the
journey to the northern industrial areas of England. In fact, the chronological order of the events in the original
diary is different from the sequence of events as arranged and presented by the narrator in the written text. As
Stansky and Abrahams (1994) noticed in their book Orwell: The Transformation:
Unlike the day-by-day, chronological form of the diary, the book begins in the middle of the journey (Indeed, the
sense of a journey, of the author being an “assignment”, has been artfully suppressed). In the first chapter we are simply
there-in an unnamed industrial town in the North-with “I” the narrator, who is staying in squalid lodgings over a squalid
tripe shop owned by a squalid couple, the Brookers. (pp. 186-87)
The opening chapter of the book is introduced by the sound of footsteps “the clumping of the mill-girls’
clogs down the cobbled street” (RWP 5) as well as that of the factory whistles early in the morning in the northern
industrial town Wigan, Lancashire. After this short introductory paragraph, the narrator proceeds to draw a
detailed picture of the Brookers family, their members, their lodging-house, their tripe shop, and their tenants.
However, compared to the sequence of the original diary, this scene lies in the middle of the author’s
two-month journey to the North which started from London on 31stJanuary 1936 to 30th March 1936. His stay in
Wigan, the longest stop in his itenerary, lasted from 10th to 25th February 1936. Thus, the period from the 31st
January to the 10th February is an ellipsis of time in the narrative text. In fact, before Wigan, and specifically
before his stay at the Brookers, he had visited Coventry (31st January), Birmingham (1st February), Stourbridge
(2nd February), Hanley (3rd February), and finally Manchester (4th-10th February). In Manchester, he stayed at
15. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER876
the Meades from 6th to 10th February. Also, when he arrived at Wigan, he shared a room in an overcrowded
house whose owners he calls the Hs. Before moving to Darlington Road with the Brookers, the Fs, he had stayed
in John and Lily Anderson’s house in Warrington Lane. Crick (1992), in his book George Orwell: A life, states
that: “The Road to Wigan Pier says nothing of Warrington Lane and begins in the famous tripe shop; and the
sudden appearance of an ‘I’, waking to the ‘clumping of the mill-girls clogs down the cobbled street’, is as
unexplained and as abrupt as in Down and Out” (p. 281).
Certainly, the arrangement of the events in the narrative in a way different from that in the Diary will serve
Orwell’s purpose of writing his book. His description of the squalor of the Brookers “lodging house” and the
squalid housing in the North, in particular, contributes to the general picture he wants to make. In fact, his
strategy is to focus on the various negative effects of Capitalism and to argue for the necessity of Socialism as an
alternative system. Thus, this first narrative segment has a very significant impact on the narrator’s experience. It
has a key position and is strategically dominant in the narration and in the narrator’s development; “the more he
had seen and experienced for himself of housing in Wigan, the more impressive, authoritative (and influential)
the total picture might have been” (Stansky & Abrahams, 1994, p. 189).
One minor example which shows the evidence of the literary process in the book is what Williams (1974)
calls, in George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays, a shift in the lodgers:
He [the writer] seems also to have shifted the lodgers around a bit: Joe, at the Brookers, is described in the notes as a
lodger at a previous house—a house that is not in the book. So in the book the Brookers house is not only given the
emphasis of first place but treated as a first, representative experience… when in the diary there is a preceding and rather
different experience. (Williams, 1974, p. 59)1
This small example, Williams explains, is an illustration of the writer’s “documentary” experience: “The
writer shapes and organizes what happened to produce a particular effect, based on experience but then created
out of it” (Williams, 1974, p. 59). Therefore, written human experience and the overall organization of the
material are actually recognized as literature and as explicit fictionality, too.
As for the temporal structure of the book, it is effectively very complex. That is why a rigorous analysis of
this system requires the study of the four interrelated questions: the moment of narration, order, duration, and
frequency.
The Moment of Narration
Besides the omissions of places visited and the shift in lodges, the temporal difference between the original
Diary (story-Now) and the narrative text (discourse-Now) is also an inherent feature of the book’s literariness. In
fact, the lapse of time which differentiates the writing of the book from the writing of the Diary, that is the journey
to the North, is another procedure used to mark the fictionality of the narrative discourse.
Crick (1992), in his book entitled George Orwell: A life, stated that in January 1936 Orwell was
commissioned by Gollancz for the Communist-dominated Left Book Club to report on mass unemployment in
the North. In fact, he offered him an advance of £500. It “was about twice the amount Orwell counted on for each
year’s survival; so he could now plan ahead, and indeed marry Eileen” (Crick, 1992, p. 278). He added that: “For
1
In the Diary, Joe is mentioned as a single, unemployed lodger at the lodging house where Orwell stayed before he moved to the
Fs, that is, the Brookers. Yet, in the book, Joe is a lodger at the Brookers’.
16. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 877
the first time he could feel reasonably secure, even modestly successful, as a professional writer” (Crick, 1992, p.
278). Orwell was in the North for two months, from 31st January to 30th March, living with working and
unemployed people in Wigan, Barnsley, and Sheffield. Orwell got married in June and sent the finished
manuscript to his agent on 15th December 1936. Stansky and Abrahams (1994) stated that “He [Orwell] would
have a rough first draft of The Road to Wigan Pier done by October, and he would send off the final version to
Leonard Moore in December 36” (p. 186). The book was finally published in 1937.
Similar to the most common narratives, narration in Orwell’s text is characterized by the anteriority of the
story’s events to those of the discourse. That is why the events of the Diary are supposed to have happened before
the recounted events in the discourse. Obviously, retrospective narration produces a past-tense narrative. This
type of narration can be illustrated by the following passage from chapter One.
The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths
of cindery and crisscrossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and
everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row
after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. (Orwell, 1982, p. 16)
This passage indicates that the normal tense of narration in English is the past tense. Here, the narrator is
relating an event which he personally experienced before writing the narrative. The past tense is indicated by
either the simple past (bore, was, were, moved, passed), showing a sequence of past events, or the past perfect
(had been). The time word mentioned in the text is “March” which indicates a period of time prior to the moment
of narration. Further in the book, another illustration can be spotted in chapter four: “When I was looking into the
house question I visited and inspected numbers of houses, perhaps a hundred or two hundred houses altogether, in
various mining towns and villages…” (Orwell, 1982, p. 65). This is another event which the narrator personally
experienced and he is relating it at the moment of narration. As in the previous passage, the tense used is the past,
namely, the continuous past (was looking) and the simple past (visited, inspected). Since he is personally
involved in the narrative, the indicative mood is predominant.
Yet, the author may resort to present-tense narration as in the following passage from chapter two:
[…] we all know that we “must have coal”, but we seldom or never remember what coal getting involves. Here am I,
sitting writing in front of my comfortable coal fire. It is April but I still need a fire. Once a fortnight the coal cart drives up
to the door and men in leather jerkins carry the coal indoors in stout sacks smelling of tar and shoot it clanking into the
coal-hole under the stairs. (Orwell, 1982, p. 30)
In addition to the past tense, the narrator uses the present tense either for description or relating habitual
events.
Therefore, this brief survey of the first question related to the analysis of the temporal structure in Orwell’s
book, that is, the moment of narration, has revealed the nature of this text. As a narrative discourse, the events are
recounted in the past. Nevertheless, the prevalence of past-tense narration in most narrative discourses does not
prevent present-tense narration from being dominant in both parts of Orwell’s text. So, the category which will be
tackled after the moment of narration is the class of order.
Order
The second question related to time analysis in RWP is the study of the aspects of discordance, anachronies,
17. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER878
in the chronological order of events. Focus will essentially be on the narrator’s digressions in the second part of
the narrative. Five main retrospective narrative segments will be selected from chapters 8 and 9 in order to
discuss the different techniques used by the narrator in his general approach to Socialism.
At the beginning of the second part of the discourse, the narrator has explicitly expressed his intention to
defend his ideology. For this purpose, he has adopted some strategies throughout his narrative discourse. In the
first part, he has presented a “fragmentary account” of mass-unemployment at its worst in “the most typical
section of the English working class at close quarters” (Orwell, 1982, p. 106). He believes that it is a vital part in
his view of Socialism. In the second part, he has resorted to reminiscences since he believes that these
biographical elements “have a symptomatic importance” to present him as a typical of his class-a “sub-caste”
(Orwell, 1982, p. 106).
In order to conduct a detailed analysis of the anachronous segments in the discourse, one can work on a
discourse time-line model so that the retrospective narrative fragments are situated in proper sequence. This
time-line model can help visualize the retrospections in linear movement. It also enables one to foreground
significant discrepancies between narration time and the story time. For this purpose a discourse time-line model
will be drawn up. Each unit corresponds to one of the autobiographical sequences figuring in the text.
Table 2
Analepsis as a Technique in the Analysis of Narrative Order
Autobiographical sequences
Discourse Unit Year Age Textual details
Narration time line
A 1903-1916 1-13
- genteel birth
- childhood
B 1917-1918 14-15
- education: oppressive system
- acquisition of bourgeois habits and class prejudices
C 1920-1921 17-18
- being both a snob and a revolutionary
- refusal of all authority
D 1922-1927 19-24
- an “outpost of Empire” in Burma
- hatred of imperialism
E 1928-1935 25-32
- Return to London
- Getting in contact with outcasts in London
Journey 31st January-30th March 33
- journey to the north of England
- report on mass-unemployment in industrial areas
In order to discuss Table 2, it would be better to sort out brief excerpts from the narrative illustrating some
cases of analepsis. The following autobiographical sequences will help us in the study of narrative order in the
text:
A/ I was born into what you might describe as the lower-upper-middle class. The upper-middle class [...] was a sort
of mound of wreckage left behind when the tide of Victorian prosperity receded… (Orwell, 1982, p. 106)
B/ When I was fourteen or fifteen I was odious little snob, but no worse than other boys of my own age and class. I
suppose there is no place in the world where snobbery is quite so ever present or where it is cultivated in such refined and
subtle forms as in an English public school… (Orwell, 1982, p. 120)
C/ Hence, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, I was both a snob and a revolutionary. I was against all authority. I had
read and re-read the entire published works of Shaw, Wells, and Galsworthy […], and I loosely described myself as a
socialist. But I had not much grasp of what Socialism meant, and no notion that the working class were human beings…
(Orwell, 1982, p. 122)
18. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 879
D/ When I was not yet twenty I went to Burma, in the Indian Imperial Police. In an “outpost of Empire” like Burma
the class-question appeared at first sight to have been shelved… I was in the Indian Police five years, and by the end of
that time I hated the imperialism I was serving with a bitterness which I probably cannot make clear… (Orwell, 1982, pp.
123-126)
E/ When I came home on leave in 1927 I was already half determined to throw my job […] I was not going back to
be part of that evil despotism. For five years I had been part of an oppressive system, and it had left me with a bad
conscience […] I thought it over and decided what I would do […] I would find out about tramps and how you got in
touch with them and what was the proper procedure for entering the casual ward, when I felt that I knew the ropes well
enough, I would go on the road myself… (Orwell, 1982, pp. 129-132)
These five excerpts which reside in Part two, chapters 8 and 9, constitute overt “autobiographical”
references. By means of this technique, analepsis, the narrator breaks the linearity of the narrative discourse so as
to present the different stages in the character’s development. These elements are retrospectively presented in the
same way as the initial ones in Part one of the narrative text. Thus, the retrospection sends us back to significant
milestones in the life of the narrator. The autobiographical references are presented in a chronological order. This
regular progress allows the young narrator to near gradually the older one till they ultimately join each other. This
advance occurs on a different temporal axis from the other grown-up narrator.
The first excerpt lies in the opening chapter of Part two, chapter 8. The starting point is an exposition of the
ambiguity of the reasons for taking his long road from Mandalay, Burma, to Wigan as well as the reasons for his
journey to the North. Then, the narrator evokes his genteel birth: “I was born in what you might describe as the
lower upper-middle class” (Orwell, 1982, p. 106). This excerpt and the following ones allow a digression from
the present to the past life of the narrator. His social status, born in a “shabby genteel family” (Orwell, 1982, p.
108) that belongs to a “Shadowy caste-system” (Orwell, 1982, p. 107), is no longer explicated in terms of money.
The distinguishing feature of this “decadent” and “wrecked” upper-middle class is that “its traditions were not to
any extent commercial, but mainly military, official and professioal” (Orwell, 1982, p. 107). Hoggart (1965), in
his essay “Introduction to The Road to Wigan Pier”2
, contends that Orwell has a characteristic effort at precision
in matters of class: “His point was that his father was a public servant, not a landowner nor a big businessman; so,
though he had the rank, status and tastes of a gentleman, his salary was modest. He was, in fact, a minor official in
the Indian Customs service” (Hoggart, 1965, p. 35). Thus, the low family income of the “lower-upper middle
class” is similar to that of the average working class. This characteristic is a basis and common ground on which
a rapprochement between the two exploited classes can be built. Both classes share the same interest and are
exploited by an unjust regime, the capitalist system.
The second and third autobiographical sequences are very significant in that this phase, his youth and
education, will have a great impact on the character’s stance. In retrospect, he is able to see why he was wrong. In
fact, looking back on his past experience, the humiliating punishments at school, the false values of the bourgeois
class and snobbery, he becomes aware of the oppressive Capitalist system and social injustice. Thus, the
representation of this retrospective experience in the narrative is part of the narrator’s strategy and adds more
weight to his argument.
The fourth and fifth autobiographical sequences are a further illustration of analepsis in Orwell’s text. The
2
This essay appeared in George Orwell. A Collection of critical Essays, edited by Raymond Williams. It first appeared in
London, published by Heinmann Educational Books in 1965.
19. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER880
narrator’s personal experience as an “outpost of Empire” in Burma, in addition to the aforementioned
autobiographical elements, has a great effect on his future life. This experience increased his hatred of
imperialism as an oppressive system. That is why, when he returned to England in 1927, he took a decision not to
return to India. Instead, he got in contact with the outcasts in London to know more about their conditions of life.3
The narrator becomes more and more conscious about the tyranny and injustice of the imperialist system,
the “unjustifiable tyranny” (Orwell, 1982, p. 127). He puts forward his argument straightforwardly: “The truth is
that no modern man, in his heart of hearts, believes that it is right to invade a foreign country and hold the
population by force. Foreign oppression is a much more obvious, untreatable evil than economic oppression”
(Orwell, 1982, p. 126). He further draws an analogy between the economic system of exploitation in England and
the British oppressive imperialist regime in India. Soon this makes him loathe both systems and decide to reject
any form of domination and oppression. “I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from
every form of man’s dominion among their tyrants” (Orwell, 1982, p. 130). Fowler (1995), in his book The
language of George Orwell talks about the young man’s experiences in Burma which:
[…] he found morally distasteful but politically illuminating; whatever his precise reasons for quitting the Imperial
Indian Police, it is clear that he was disgusted with and outraged by the effects of imperialism on the ground, and guilty
about his part in the process. (p. 120)
Because he has been part of the imperialist oppressive system for five years, he feels extremely ashamed and
he is left with a bad conscience. Therefore, his experience in Burma, with its evil effects on him, has greatly
contributed to his development and awareness.
To conclude, these autobiographical sequences are related in a later period in the narrative. The account of
the narrator’s earlier experiences is obviously anterior to the starting point of the first narrative. The narrator has
postponed these autobiographical references; then he ultimately filled the gaps. This retrospective temporal gap
filling responds to the narrator’s need of making the appalling conditions the focal point of the narrative.
Therefore, these retrospective segments are one aspect of the distortion of the temporal order in RWP as well as a
further characteristic of the author’s literary creativity. His shaping of the narrative through the systematic
re-arrangement of events and scenes is a deliberate choice. The aspects of analepsis figuring in Table 2
correspond to the autobiographical segments from the text. They are also instances of the violation of the
chronological order of events in the story. Therefore, the emancipation from these restrictions shows the author’s
creativity as well as the literariness of the text.
Duration
The third category in the narratological analysis of time in RWP is duration. It consists in the relationship
between two different types of time in the text: story time, that is, the fictional time taken up by action (measured
in days, months, years ,etc.); and discourse time, that is the time it takes a reader to read the text (measured in
lines, pages, etc.). The play on these two naturally different times, story time, and discourse time, yields several
3
Isabelle Jarry in George Orwell. One Hundred Years of Anticipation, has developed this idea as follows:
He came home [from Burma] perfectly disgusted by imperialism. He who had already shown, during his schooling, a serious
resistance to any form of authority which ended to support his rebellion from within the colonial system. True, he could have
looked though not easily, more closely at the coercive methods of the British in India; by donning the costume of a policeman, he
had the most brutal and most direct vision that the huge machine could give to dominate and exploit what was then the Empire
(Jarry 21).
20. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 881
effects of meaning.
The analysis of duration also involves speed and the rhythmic system in the text. This study permits the
determination of the places of speed-up and slow-down figuring in the narrative. Thus, focus will be on the
different techniques used in RWP which allow the narrative to accelerate, namely, ellipses; and those which
permit it to decelerate namely, pauses. Both strategies will determine the rhythm of the temporal movement in the
text.
Ellipsis. In order to conduct the study of the first aspect of duration, ellipsis, a comparison between the
original diary and the narrative may reveal the numerous cuts made by the narrator. The main omissions will be
presented on the table including spatio-temporal references, the names of some families with whom the narrator
lived during his journey as well as their addresses, and other details. Table 3 will be discussed so as to determine
the effects of these omissions on the narrative in general and on the narrator’s purpose in particular.
Table 3
Ellipsis as a Technique in Manipulation of Duration
Unit Time Town Family/Address Experiences
A 25 February-2nd March Liverpool
The Deiners :
John and May Deiner (working-class
family)
Meeting George Garrett, a Communist docker
Taken by Garrett to the docks in Liverpool
Visiting Corporation Buildings
B 2nd-5th March Sheffield
The Searles (a decent family)
Wallace Road
Meeting William Brown a Communist
partially-crippled man “B”
Being exhausted by Brown’s arguments and
itinerary
Rooks Corpulating scene
Slums-girl scene
C 5-13 March Leeds
The Dakins (a middle-class family)
His sister Marjorie and her husband
Humphrey Dakin
21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley
Taken to see haworth Parsonage, the Brontë
family home etc.)
Attending meetings and discussions
D 13-25 March Barnsley
The Gs
Mr and Mrs G (working-class family)
Agnes Terrace
Very clean and decent house
Meeting Tommy Degnan a Communist.
Descent to Wentworth Pit
Descent to Grimethorpe Pit
Attending with Wilde a general meeting
Listening to Mosley at Public Hall
E 26-30 March Leeds
The Dakins
Marjorie and Humphrey Dakin
21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley
Spending weekend at Dakins
F 30 March London - Back home - Return to the South from the North
An overall look at Table 3 reveals the number of experiences and stops eliminated or rather disregarded in
the narrative despite their actual occurrence. In fact, these are significant stops which are essential constituents of
the protagonist’s itinerary to the North. Yet, the narrator’s strategy is mainly to put emphasis on particular
experiences which are pertinent to his general purpose. Moreover, he is not interested in what he sees but rather in
how he perceives reality. The narrator’s decision to live among the “lower depths” during his journey to the north
rather than with “decent” people and in “decent” lodgings or hotels is deliberate
In addition to his deliberate choice of lodgings and much emphasis on experiences pertinent to his purpose,
the narrator has adopted another strategy. By means of the technique of ellipses, the narrator has avoided not only
to live in decent lodgings but also to mention those he stayed at in his narrative. In fact, he recorded in the Diary
that, after his descent into the coal pit in Wigan, he had a hot bath in the Brookers’ lodging-house, “I went home
21. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER882
and had dinner and then soaked myself for a long time in a hot bath. Of course very few miners have baths in their
homes-only a tub of water in front of the kitchen fire. I should say it would be quite impossible to keep clean
without a proper bathtub” (Orwell & Augus, 1968, p. 213).
As he simply gave up clean and decent lodgings that were found for him, he equally disregarded all the other
decent houses after his long stop in Wigan. In fact, as the table unveils this truth, there are other decent families
which provided him with accommodation, including his sister Marjorie. Some of these families belong to
working class while others are middle class ones. First, as Table 3 shows in Unit A, he stayed at the Deiners (John
and May Deiner), a working class family in Liverpool after his departure from Wigan from 25 February to 2nd
March 1936. George Garrett, a Communist docker, took him down to the docks in Liverpool to see a “gang” of
men waiting in hope of work “the company agent picked out fifty at random from two hundred hungry and ragged
men waiting” (Crick, 1992, p. 285). The Deiners also drove both Orwell and Garrett around the town to see the
slums and slum clearance.
Unit B in Table 3 stands for the next stop in the narrator’s itinerary but omitted from the
narrative—Sheffield. He stayed at the Searles—a working class family. In his Diary, Orwell affirms that: “I have
seldom met people with more natural decency” (Orwell & Augus, 1968, p. 219). Further, he adds “They keep the
house very clean and decent” (Orwell & Augus, 1968, p. 220). The narrator spent three days, from 2nd March to
5th March, touring Sheffield with William Brown—a Communist partially-crippled man:
Either the arguments or the itinerary of the fiery William Brown left Orwell exhausted, so he cut short his stay in
Sheffield after three days and went across to his welcoming sister and hostile brother-in-law in Leeds, where he stayed the
best part of the week. (Crick, 1992, p. 290)
Units C and E refer to two significant stops though at the same place, Leeds. He effectively stayed with the
Dakins, his elder sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin, twice: the first stay, from 5th March to 13th
March; and the second one from 26 March to 30 March. His experience with this middle-class family, living at 21
Estcourt Avenue, Headingley is equally disregarded in the narrative and completely deleted. During his stay at
the Dakins, the narrator was quite conscious all the while of the big difference in the atmosphere between a
middle-class home and a working-class home.
Unit D, that is, the two-week stop at Barnsley is interposed between the two-previously stops in Leeds. This
long stop lasted from 13th March to 25th March. The narrator stayed at the Gs, a working-class house at Agnes
Terrace. Though two coal miners, Mr and Mrs G owned a big house: “This house is bigger than I had imagined”
(Orwell & Augus, 1968, p. 226). He also added: “The house is very clean and decent and my room the best I have
had in Lodgings up here. Flannelette sheets this time” (Orwell & Augus, 1968, p. 227). He further affirmed his
appreciative attitude about this house as follows: “I am very comfortable in this house… ” (Orwell & Augus,
1968, p. 228). But the narrator also had additional activities in Barnsley, namely, meetings attendance, coal-pit
descents and listening to Socialist Mosley speaking at the Public Hall in Barnsley.
Consequently, the discussion of this table permits to shed light on one aspect of the discrepancy between
story time and discourse time in RWP. This discrepancy is accomplished by means of the distortion of the
category of duration, particularly through the resort to ellipses. This process has brought about various effects
that we can sum up as follows:
22. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 883
Author’s intentionality: The focus on dirt, poverty, and smell in the narrative in contrast to cleanness,
decency, and comfort found in the omitted sequences shows the author’s intention to zoom in on the negative
aspect of the capitalistic system.
Author’s ideological commitment: The emphasis put on the negative side of the Western social system is a
step further towards the writer’s argument.
Subjectivity/objectivity polarity: focalization puts in question the author’s objectivity and reliability as a
faithful reporter. Thus, RWP cannot be considered as a mere reportage.
Reality/Fictionality: The author’s deliberate arrangement and shaping of his material shows his creativity,
hence the literariness and fictionality of the narrative. That is why, Orwell’s text cannot be considered as a mere
autobiography. The autobiographical sequences, whether omitted or represented in the narrative, serve to further
the writer’s political stance. Though there are autobiographical elements in the discourse, they are fictionalized in
the text. Indeed, they are not represented in a chronological sequence as it is the usual norm for autobiographical
works. They are shaped by the narrator and presented retrospectively to add more weight to the general argument
of the text.
Pause. The second aspect of duration in RWP, in addition to ellipsis, is pause. Narrative pause, as previously
explicated in methodology, occurs when discourse time elapses on description or comment. A diagrammatic
representation can be used to conduct the notion of pause in Orwell’s text. Then, this diagram will be followed by
discussion so as to study its effect on the author’s general purpose of the book as a whole. In other words,
narrative pause will be deployed as a further step in the advance of the writer’s argument.
Table 4
Pause as a Technique in the Presentation of Narrative Duration
Overall organization of narrative in terms of duration
Discourse time line
Unit Parts Time Pages Chapters
A Part one-Journey
31st January-30th March 1936
(2 months)
pp.1 105 1 7
B
Part two-Autobiographical
sequences
1903-1936 (33 years) pp.106 134 89
As Table 4 indicates, studying the effects of rhythm on the macroscopic level seems more pertinent. In fact,
this process consists in the cutting of the text into two main “big narrative syntagms” (Genette, 1972, p. 124).
This table of variations presents both the big narrative articulations and the internal chronology to measure their
story time. Yet, it seems important to notice that these narrative segments do not always coincide with the
apparent divisions of the text into parts and chapters.4
The rhythm of the narrative is greatly determined by the
relationships between the internal narrative articulations and the external divisions (parts, chapters, etc.). Thus, a
suggested chronological sequence of RWP is put forward and it will be followed by speed variations of the text.
a) Chronological sequence: Two main units can be distinguished:
Unit A: Journey. This deals with experiences in the North (31st January-30th March 1936).
Unit B: Autobiographical sequences (1903-1936):
(1) This sequence concerns Eric’s birth in Bengal, India and his return to England with his mother. It may be
4
Unit A may coincide with Part one in the narrative whereas Unit B and its other sub-divisions may not.
23. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER884
called childhood (1903-1909).
(2) The following temporal segment is dominated by his adolescence years. It may be referred to as:
youth/education (1909-1922).
(3) The third period covers his “out-post” Imperial service in India. It may be named Burmese Days
(1922-1927).
(4) The last sequence has to do with the narrator’s first experience with the social outcasts on the outskirts of
London. It is called initial journey (1927-1936).
The main purpose of this approximately coherent chronology is to establish the rhythms of Orwell’s
narrative.
b) Speed Variations of the Narrative: According to the hypothesis suggested above, the big speed variations
in the narrative will be as follows:
A-Journey: 100 pages for two months.
B-Chronological experiences: 28 pages for 33 years:
Sub-divisions of Unit B:
(1) Childhood: 13 pages for five or six years.
(2) Youth / education: three pages for 12 or 13 years.
(3) Burmese Days: seven pages for five years.
(4) Initial journey: four pages for nine years.
Given these data, we can deduce the following conclusions:
(1) This global survey of speed variations of the narrative indicates the amplitude of these variations which
ranges from 100 pages for two months to 28 pages for a whole period of 33 years in the narrator’s lifetime. Thus,
there is a great discrepancy between the length of the discourse (discourse time) and the temporality of the story
(story time).
(2) The analysis of pause as a second aspect of duration in Orwell’s text elucidates the internal evolution of
the narrative. The progressive slowdown of the narrative is apparent in the first big narrative unit which relates
the narrator’s experiences in the industrial North. This slowdown gives free rein to long descriptive scenes
particularly about food, work, and housing conditions in the northern industrial areas. These significant long
scenes only cover a tiny duration of story.
(3) The presence of long descriptive scenes interspersed with ellipses marks the discontinuity of the
narrative. This discontinuity is also made apparent by the disequilibrium between the two big narrative units in
the text.
Yet, there is a great number of descriptive scenes in RWP whose nature is essentially iterative, that is, “they
do not relate to a particular moment in the story, but to a series of analogous moments, and consequently by no
means can contribute to the slow-down of the narrative, if not the opposite” (Genette, 1972, pp. 133-134). In fact,
description in Orwell’s text does not determine a narrative pause, a halt of the story or action. If the narrator
describes an object in detail, such as the Brookers’ lodging-house or the tripe-shop, or even work in coal-pits, this
interruption actually corresponds to a contemplative stop of the narrator himself. This stop is part of the
temporality of the story. Therefore, this second type of canonical movement, that is, narrative pause, is
transgressed by the Orwellian text. Description is resorbed in narration. This resorption makes description in
24. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 885
RWP, not merely a moment of intensive activity, both physical and intellectual. It is essentially an integral part in
the narrator’s argument. For instance, the narrator has created scenes throughout the novel. These scenes are
described in great detail to provide the reader with accurate information about the discussed problems in the text
such as housing, poverty, and mass-unemployment. This is always to serve his general purpose.
Frequency
Frequency is one of the essential aspects of narrative temporality. What Genette calls narrative frequency
are all the frequency relations between narrative and diegesis (Genette, 1972, p. 145). The analysis of this
temporal category will focus on two principal types of narrative frequency, namely, singulative and iterative
tellings. Four excerpts are chosen from Orwell’s text so as to study these two types of narrative in detail and to
show the primacy of the iterative narration in the book. Thus, in order to conduct a thorough analysis of the
iterative segments in the discourse, a table can be drawn to illustrate this strategy (see Table 5).
Table 5
Singulative-Iterative Telling as a Strategy in the Analysis of Narrative Frequency
Discourse Unit Time Place Textual details
Story time line
A 15th February Wigan Slums’girl scene
B 20th February Wigan Coal-picking scene
C 21st February Wigan Brookers’moral portrait
D 23rd February Wigan Coal-pit descent
Four passages are selected from RWP in order to provide illustrations for the study of the category of
frequency. These illustrative excerpts will be discussed to elucidate the relationship between the two types of
singulative and iterative tellings. Each unit stands for one passage.
A/ […] As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses
running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones,
poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which runs from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked… 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… the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen. (Orwell, 1982, p. 16)
B/ […] We stayed there [up the slag-heap] till the train was empty. In a couple of hours the people had picked the
dirt over to the last grain. They slung their sacks over shoulder or bicycle, and started on the two-mile trudge back to
Wigan… This business of robbing the dirt trains takes place every day in Wigan, at any rate in winter, and at more
collieries than one. It is of course extremely dangerous. (Orwell, 1982, pp. 92-93)
C/ The meals at the Brookers’ house were uniformly disgusting. For breakfast you got two rashers of bacon and a
pale fried egg, and bread-and-butter which had often been cut overnight and always has thumb-marks on it. However
tactfully I tried, I could never induce Mr. Brooker to let me cut my own bread-and-butter; he would hand it to me slice by
slice, each slice gripped firmly under that broad black thumb. For dinner there were generally those three penny steak
puddings which are sold ready made in tins… For supper there was the pale flabby Lancashire cheese and biscuits. They
always referred to them reverently as “cream crackers”… It was usual to souse everything, even a piece of cheese, with
Worcester Sauce, but I never saw anyone brave the marmalade jar, which was an unspeakable mass of stickiness and dust.
Mrs. Brooker had her meals separately… She had a habit of constantly wiping her blankets. Towards the end of my stay
she took to tearing off strips of newspaper for this purpose, and in the morning the floor was often littered with
crumpled-up balls of slimy paper which lay there for hours. The smell of the kitchen was dreadful but, as with that of the
bedroom, you ceased to notice it after a while. (Orwell, 1982, pp. 13-14)
25. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER886
D/ When the coal has been extracted to the depth to which the machine has cut, the coal face had advanced by five
feet… As far as possible the three operations of cutting, blasting, and extraction are done in three separate shifts, the
cutting in the afternoon, the blasting at night…, and the “filling” in the morning shift, which lasts from six in the morning
until half past one. (Orwell, 1982, pp. 28)5
Before discussing these excerpts, it is important to evoke the dominance of singulative telling in the
traditional novel. In fact, the iterative segments are supposed to be in the service of the singulative narrative and
hence dependent on it. The classical function of the iterative narrative is similar to that of description. That is why
Orwell’s text has shown a significant interest in the use of iterative narrative. The author devoted a great number
of pages, especially in Part one, which aim to relate the daily life of people such as the Brookers, the coal-miners
at work and the description of the appalling conditions of housing, food, and work in Wigan, Barnsley, and
Sheffield.
Unlike the short singulative segments at the beginning of Part two, namely, the autobiographical sequences;
these four iterative units have enough amplitude to be the object of developed narratives. Though they sometimes
represent a single event, there is an obvious passage from a singulative event, to a habit. For instance, the
description of the scene about the slums’ girl poking at a blocked waste-pipe produces a great effect on the
bourgeois reader. As Richard Hoggart puts it in his essay “Introduction to The Road to Wigan Pier”:
He [Orwell] was trying to correct that conveniently distant vision of other people’s problems, that face saving view
of slum life and slum dwellers, which the training of his class offered him; he was insisting that people do hate living in
slums…, that even if some have become so dispirited as not to seem to mind, or have adapted themselves, it is still
rotten-rotten for them and rotten for what it does to the souls of those of us who are willing to let other people live die
hard and they are like that. These are attitudes not dead yet. (Hoggart, 1965, pp. 42-43)
The juxtaposition of these three scenes, that is, the train leaving the town, the slums’girl and the two crooks
treading, has great effects not only on the narrator but also on the reader.
Hunter contends that the contrast between the image of the slums girl and the other two images “underlines
the narrator’s alienation and lack of understanding” (Hunter, 1984, p. 50). The narrator has never seen before the
situation of the two birds treading. Thus, he tries to defamiliarize it by rendering it “curious” and describing it in
a detailed manner.
The train leaving Wigan is a symbol of the narrator’s “escape bearing him away from the disgust of his
earlier experience” (Hunter, 1984, p. 50). Crick also depicts the train departure from Wigan as itself “a symbol of
the writer’s almost desperate pain at being merely an observer, a member of another class who, having done his
contracted task, is carried off remorselessly and mechanically simply to write about “what can be done” (Crick,
1992, p. 287). Thus, placing these three scenes together in the book differently from the Diary6
, especially the
young woman and the drain juxtaposed to the birds procreating has a symbolic purpose: “the sterile doom of
industrial ugliness can be redeemed by nature, even the ugliest birds can procreate, even in an urban wasteland”
(Crick, 1992, p. 287).
Besides, placing antagonistic scenes juxtaposed with each other is a strategy used by the narrator which has
a twofold purpose. On the one hand, this technique shows the narrator’s great concern for his reader. In fact, as
5
The italics in the excerpts are mine except “would” in unit C; it is Orwell’s.
6
In the Diary the slums-girl scene happened on 15th February while passing up a horrible squalid side-alley in Wigan whereas
the rooks scene occurred on 2nd March in Sheffield (Orwell & Augus, 1968, p. 203, 216).
26. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 887
Hunter puts it: “The largest concern is how to make familiar a situation that lies outside the lives of most of his
readers without imposing a private and dominating interpretation on it” (Hunter, 1984, p. 51). The reader is
directly involved in the narrator’s experience. On the other hand, the technique of juxtaposition also shows “a
poetic sensibility; the plain descriptive style of the documentary was, indeed, a very deliberate artistic creation”
(Crick, 1992, p. 287).
Apart from the usual exhausted face of the slums girl, Unit B deals with another aspect of daily life in a
northern industrial area like Wigan, what the narrator calls the “immense and systematic thieving by the
unemployed” (Orwell, 1982, p. 90). This process of “scrambling for the coal” (Orwell, 1982, p. 91) consists in
picking it out of the slag-heaps. The narrator was taken one afternoon by an unemployed miner to witness “the
wild rush of ragged figures” (Orwell, 1982, p. 92) and describe this horrific daily scene:
Everyone knows that the unemployed have got to get fuel somehow. So every afternoon several hundred men risk
their necks and several hundred women scrubble in the mud for hours-and all for half a hundred weight of inferior fuel,
value ninepence. (Orwell, 1982, p. 93) (The italics are mine)
This scene illustrates the narrator’s strategy which consists in the passage from a singulative narrative to an
iterative one. The narrator’s visit to a slag-heap one afternoon is one of the pictures that stay in his mind. This
picture has many effects on the narrator as well as on the reader. First, in addition to that of the slums’ girl, the
coal-picking scene is another haunting image of the horrors of dirt, unemployment, and poverty from which the
working-class is terribly suffering. As a personal observer, the narrator tries to give a vivid account, by means of
this strategy, of the misery he has seen in the North. Second, the narrator is defamiliarising the situation in order
to produce a great effect on his reader. The bourgeois reader, who completely ignores the appalling conditions of
the working-class, will not only be surprised, but even shocked. The narrator calls his reader to share his feeling
and mainly to be aware of “the special ignoring of an unemployed miner being reduced to this open
dehumanizing thieving…” (Crick, 1992, p. 286). The narrator has also experienced the great surprise and
disgrace at the sight of the hideous conditions of coal-miners and mass unemployment in the industrial North. As
Hoggart puts it plainly:
The North of England was stranger to Orwell than Burma. Not only had he spent many years out of England; he was
by class and domicile apart from the heavy industrial areas of the North. They hit him hard, and the harder because he
saw them at the worst time, at the bottom of the slump. He set out to recreate as vividly and concretely as he could the
shock of this world of slag-heaps and rotting basements, of shabby men with grey clothes and grey faces, and women
looking like grandmothers but holding small babies-their babies, all of them with the air of bundles of old clothes roughly
tied up… (Hoggart, 1965, p. 40)
The third passage, Unit C, is another example of the narrator’s portrayal of poverty, dirt and smell which he
has seen during his social investigation of the working-class conditions in the North. It is a description of a typical
common lodging-house, its famous tripe shop and the habits of its dwellers, especially its owners—the Brookers.
The narrator caricatures both Mr. and Mrs. Brooker, the invalid woman, as well as their “shamefaced meals”
(Orwell, 1982, p. 10). Mr. Brooker does most of the household chores except cooking and laundering which are
accomplished by the wife of one of the Brookers’ son in Canada and Emnie, the fiancée of another son in London.
But it is Mr. Brooker who goes through the ritual of attending the tripe-shop, gives the lodgers their meals and
“does out” the bedrooms:
27. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER888
He was always moving with incredible slowness from one hated job to another. Often the beds were still unmade at
six the evening, and at any hour of the day you were liable to meet Mr. Brooker on the stairs carrying the chamber-pot
which he gripped with his thumb well over the rim. In the mornings he sat by the fire with a tub of filthy water, peeling
potatoes of slow-motion picture. I never saw anyone who could peel potatoes with quite such an air of brooding
resentment… (Orwell, 1982, p. 11) (The italics are mine.)
The salient feature in these two iterative passages is the use of frequency adverbs and other expressions of
time which indicate monotony and routine in the Brookers’ food habits and daily domestic activities. This
repetitiveness and uniformity which mark their food, gestures, actions, and even laments about their lower-class
lodgers can produce many effects.
First, there is a feeling of “stagnant meaningless decay” due to the vile food, the dirt and smells in the
lodging-house. The narrator feels depressed and disgusted.
Second, Mrs. Brooker’s “self-pitying talk” as well as “her habit of wiping her mouth with bits of newspaper”
are not lost on the narrator. He is revolted by Brookers’ dirty habits, lamentable complaints and dreadful smells:
“The most dreadful thing about the Brookers is the way they say the same things over and over again. It gives you
the feeling that they are not real people at all, but a kind of ghost for ever rehearsing the same futile rigmarole”
(Orwell, 1982, p. 15).
Third, the literary process is evident through the use of this strategy by the narrator. As Williams (1984)
contends, in his book Orwell, “there is the expected and necessary development of a scene, in the published
version: a fuller and more fluent description, details recollected from memory. But there is also a saturation of the
scene with feeling” (Williams, 1984, p. 50). Williams also argues that the narrator has produced two types of
effect: a particular effect and a more general and important effect. On the one hand, the emphasis in the book on
the Brookers’ house as the first scene and its treatment as a representative experience is an illustration of its
literariness: “The writer shapes and organizes what happened to produce a particular effect based on experience”
(Williams, 1984, p. 51). On the other hand, the overall organization of RWP is one major example of its
literariness and fictionality. In fact, the creation of a character in the first part as an “isolated observer going
around and seeing for himself”, this created character, will then be “used to [an] important effect in the second
half, the argument about socialism” (Willams, 1984, p. 51).
The last iterative segment to be discussed is the narrator’s descent in a coal pit in Wigan. This is one of his
significant experiences in the North where he describes the hideous working conditions of coal miners in and out
of the pit. The narrator uses the technique of observation for his description of the nature of the “fillers” work, the
habitual processes of their getting down, travelling through coal home for every shift. Besides, he describes the
other conditions down the pit, namely, the suffocating heat, the dreadful noise of roaring machines and
explosions, “the dusty fiery smell”, the depth and darkness of the place. These hideous conditions cause much
suffering and pain to coal-miners. The narrator’s detailed description of the miner’s awful conditions of work has
many effects on the narrator himself as well as on his reader:
Like in the preceding excerpts, the narrator approximately adopts the same strategy. He moves from one
particular situation to more generalizations. The passage from a singulative telling to an iterative telling aims at
describing the miners and the unemployed’s plight.
Besides, similar to his earlier reaction to the previous experiences in Part one, the narrator is greatly
28. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER 889
surprised and even shocked at the long-suffering of the working class. For instance, he expresses his surprise on
seeing and experiencing himself a long, three-to five mile, journey down to the pit creeping through passages to
the coal face; “What is surprising… is the immense horizontal distances that have to be traveled underground.
Before I had been down a mine I had vaguely imagined the miner stepping out of the cage and getting to work on
a ledge of coal a few yards away” (Orwell, 1982, p. 22). Then, he adds: “You do not notice the effect of this till
you have gone a few hundred yards” (Orwell, 1982, p. 23). Thus, the narrator tries to generalize by inviting the
reader to be involved and to share his feelings and attitude.
Therefore, the narrator’s description of the working-class conditions has a total defamiliarizing effect. This
technique enables the reader to see “the thing, the scene, the incident as though for the first time” (Hoggart, 1965,
p. 46). This is due partly to the narrator’s literary gifts as a writer and partly to the moral tension, his
“nonconformity and humane personality” (Hoggart, 1965, p. 46). The author’s nonconformity is clearly
manifested through his play of time in the narrative discourse.
Indeed, the analysis of the category of time, as an integral part in the study of the text’s general structure, has
revealed the necessity to examine the different relationships established between the temporality of the narrative
and that of the related story. The results of this rigorous study can be conceived through the different types of
temporal deformation. On the one hand, all these aspects of deformation are due to one major reason which
consists in the discrepancy between the story-time and the discourse-time. This clearly explicates the complexity
and the ambiguity of the structure of the narrative discourse, hence the text’s literariness. On the other hand, the
tension at the level of the form actually reflects the tension in the author’s stance and his alienation.
To conclude, the analysis of RWP based on Gérard Genette’s structuralist model is invaluable in many ways.
In fact, this study has revealed that this narrative has not a simple and plain form, but, on the contrary, it has quite
a complex structure. The main constituents of this structure, namely, the categories of time, mood, and voice, are
the inherent features which constitute the literariness of the text. Besides, the author’s deviation from the
traditional literary norms and criteria not only has a defamiliarizing effect but also adds to the complexity of the
text’s structure and organization. Finally, the author’s ability to reshape and reorganize the fictionalized events of
the narrative is another proof of the text’s literariness and fictionality despite its apparent documentary and
autobiographical form.
Conclusion
The present paper has proposed analytical tools which are potentially applicable to the study of Orwell’s text,
especially as a non-linear narrative. The set of analytical tools selected for this enquiry are far from being
exhaustive but only the pertinent ones are chosen from seminal areas of modern literary theory and criticism,
namely, the prominent field of Formalism and its salient figures such as Schklovsky and Jakobson. Thus the
emphasis has been put on the internal elements of the text which constitute its literariness and show the author’s
potential creative abilities. Despite the ambiguity and absence of fixed border lines between different genres in
the crucial period of the 1930s, the rigorous structuralist analysis of RWP has made it possible to trace
fundamental literary traits in the novel.
Furthermore, the particular form of the text itself has shown the author’s “play” with genre and the
subversive nature of the novel. In fact, the author’s choice of this mixed genre which combines the real and the
29. GEORGE ORWELL’S NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE IN THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER890
imaginative or the documentary and the fictional, the autobiographical and the journalistic, is actually a deliberate
choice. Therefore, the author’s intention in this novel is clear. The deliberate choice of this particular form of the
novel has a specific aim. For Orwell, the intentional challenge of norms can be a liberating tool in literature and
ultimately serve the writer’s political and ideological purposes.
Besides, this research paper has attempted to proffer an authentic text-based analysis. Effectively, it is not an
abstract study of theories and principles. Discussion has been essentially based on concrete examples and
excerpts from the text itself. The research has also relied on tables for further illustration. Thus, the results are
inferred from the logical discussion of these tables and selected passages.
However, a structuralist approach by itself to Orwell’s text RWP may not be exhaustive. The investigation of
this text from a different angle, namely, the materialist historical perspective seems necessary. In fact, the
deployment of this strategy can reveal the external elements of the text, that is, its social dimension. Therefore,
the combination of both strategies may be fruitful to show the author’s creativity and subversion on both levels of
the text, that is, form and content.
References
Crick, B. (1992). George Orwell: A life. Middlesex: Penguin Book Ltd..
Cuddon, J. A. (1999). Dictionary of literary terms and literary theories. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd..
Fowler, R. (1985). Linguistics and the novel (pp. 71-121). London: Mathuen and Co. Ltd..
Fowler, R. (1995). The language of George Orwell. Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd..
Genette, G. (1972). Figures III. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Hoggart, R. (1965). Introduction to the Road to Wigan Pier: A collection of critical essays (pp. 34-51). In W. Raymond (Ed.).
London: Heinemann Educational Books.
Hunter, L. (1984). Communication and culture (pp. 45-69). Stony Stratford: Open University Press.
Orwell, G. (1946a). Politics of the English language. Retrieved from http://www.Resort.Com/prime8/orwell/patee.html
Orwell, G. (1946b). The prevention of literature. Retrieved from http://www.Resort.com/prime8/orwell/preventlit2.html
Orwell, G. (1982). The Road to Wigan Pier. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd..
Orwell, S., & Augus, I. (1968). Collected essays, journalism and letters (vol. 1). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Shklovsky, V. (1965). Art as technique. London: Reis.
Stansky, P., & Abrahams, W. (1994). Orwell: The transformation. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Williams, R. (1974). George Orwell: A collection of critical essays (pp. 52-61). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams, R. (1984). Orwell: “Observation and Imagination” (pp. 41-53). London: Fontana Paperbacks.
30. Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836
November 2014, Vol. 4, No. 11, 891-894
Differences in Values Between Mother and Daughter in Cord
LIU Xi, MA Wen-ying
Changchun University, Changchun, China
Edna O’Brien (1930- ), an Irish novelist, poet, and short story writer, is considered as a pioneer for her frank
portrayals of women and the most gifted woman writing in English at her time. Her first novel, The Country Girls
(1960), was an immediate success. Her writing is lyrical and intense with passions and aspirations. Set in Britain,
the short story Cord describes a story about how the mother and the daughter got along in the short reunion after a
long separation. The paper mainly explores different religious values, cultural values, and social values between
them which caused irreconcilable conflicts. The present paper concludes that the “Cord”, the blood tie, can never
get rid of the spiritual barrier. Only mutual understanding can eliminate the gap and acquire a harmonious relation
between parents and children.
Keywords: Cord, religious values, cultural values, social values
Introduction
O’Brien’s works often “revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men,
and to society as a whole” (Yang, 2012b, p. 262). The influence of her Catholic upbringing is apparent in much of
her work, “which depicts both Irish village life during the 1940s and 1950s and contemporary urban settings”
(Cooke, 2011, p. 6). Set in Britain in the 1960s, Cord describes a story about how the mother went to see her
daughter, Claire, after they were separated for a long time. Claire was working in London as a poet after receiving
a degree while her mother was chaining herself to the Irish village all her life. Someday, when the mother was
told that Claire “lost her faith… ” (Yang, 2012a, p. 342), the next day, she took a flight to London. The first
evening at Claire’s home passed well enough. However, from the second day ,it seemed the conflicts emerged
unexpectedly so that they quarreled a lot since then. The mother felt hurt and she left six days later. Another
separation came as a great relief to both of them. After they kissed each other goodbye, they learned they could
come back to their own life again. There is no denying that on one hand, there was a close blood tie between them
which was called “Cord”, on the other hand, the mother and the daughter were drifting irreparably further apart
from each other. Although they were connected by the cord, however, their differences in various aspects could
hardly be eliminated so that driven by the wide gap, they failed to understand each other.
What were the differences which caused irreconcilable conflicts between Claire and her mother? The
present paper will comment the differences between the mohter and the daughter from the perspective of
Acknowledgements: This paper is a part of the results of the research program the authors have participated “The study of
counter-elite essentiality in American Post-modernism novels” [2013] No. 265.
LIU Xi, master, lecturer, School of Foreign Languages, Changchun University.
MA Wen-ying, Ph.D., associate professor, School of Foreign Languages, Changchun University.
DAVID PUBLISHING
D
31. DIFFERENCES IN VALUES BETWEEN MOTHER AND DAUGHTER IN CORD892
religious values, cultureal values, and social values.
Differences in Religious Values Between Mother and Daughter
Cord tells the story about how people are influenced by different kinds of values and how the mother and the
daughter failed to establish mutual understanding. The mother-daughter tensions are mainly driven by different
religious values.
Religious values play a leading role in the establishment of an individual’s identity and have a great
influence upon his whole life. Religious values refer to ethical principles founded in religious traditions and
beliefs. “In contrast to personal values, religious-based values are based on scriptures and a religion’s established
norms” (Wilfred, 2004, p. 167).
“Various aspects of the significance of religious values have been considered with respect to novels, their
relevance to a particular religious group (the Jains for instance or Latin Americans), and in relation to human
society” (Ramsden, 2009, p. 241).
Based on such circumstances, when the mother was told that her daughter lost her faith, it was an actual
heavy blow to her. Born and brought up in Ireland, the mother was a devout Catholic. She “believed totally in the
God that created her, sent her this husband, and this daughter” (Yang, 2012a, p. 342). Owing to her firm belief,
she thought Claire should be a faithful Catholic all her life. When facing the fact that Claire had no faith any more,
she thought she should take some measures instantly so as to reconvert her daughter into a Catholic. The moment
she stepped into Claire’s house, she unpacked the gifts that she brought to her with true affections. A lot of
wonderful things were scattered, including “a chicken, bread, eggs, a tapestry of a church spire which she’d done
all winter, stitching at it until she was almost blind, a holy water font, ashtrays made from shells, and lamps
converted from bottles” (Yang, 2012a, p. 343). For one thing, the presents, such as the chicken, bread, and eggs,
actually demonstrated her deep love. Nothing could impair her sincere emotions to the daughter no matter where
she was. For another, the gifts like the church-patterned tapestry and holy water font, which left Claire a deep
impression, in fact, carried a religious significance which suggested her real purpose. She told Claire that she did
the tapestry especially for her with which she preached the Cod’s creeds speechlessly. Claire saw the
church-patterned tapestry and thought “it was ugly”. She thought of the winter nights and “the Aladdin lamp
smoking, and her mother hunched over her work, not even using a thimble to ease the needle through, because she
believed in sacrifice” (Yang, 2012a, p. 343). Though in the eyes of the mother the tapestry represented her
determination to sacrifice her life to God, Claire thought in the totally different way. Obviously, ugliness of the
church-patterned tapestry was her declaration to fight against religious forces. Nobody could tell exactly why she
lost her faith all of a sudden and most probably the causes were really complicated. Furthermore, the mother
“carried all her gifts to her daughter and put them in the front room alongside the books and some pencil
drawings” (Yang, 2012a, p. 345). She learned it well that books were really important for her daughter because
she was a poet. Now the church-patterned tapestry and the holy water font were standing alongside with the
books, which implied the mother’ hope to reconvert Claire by such sacred things. However, to her
disappointment, her daughter was neither likely to be touched nor to be reconverted because Claire thought
“…how incongruous they looked” (Yang, 2012a, p. 343) while they were placed in the front room.
The mother spared no efforts to reconvert the daughter into a Catholic, Claire could hardly satisfy her
