Keep the Aspidistra Flying

"Gordon thought it all out, in the naïve selfish manner of a boy. There are two ways to live, he decided. You can be rich, or you can deliberately refuse to be rich. You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it. He took it for granted that he himself would never be able to make money. It hardly even occurred to him that he might have talents which could be turned to account. That was what his schoolmasters had done for him; they had rubbed it into him that he was a seditious little nuisance and not likely to 'succeed' in life. He accepted this. Very well, then, he would refuse the whole business of 'succeeding'; he would make it his especial purpose not to 'succeed'. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven; better to serve in hell than serve in heaven, for that matter. Already, at sixteen, he knew which side he was on. He was against the money-god and all his swinish priesthood. He had declared war on money; but secretly, of course."

I did not declare war on the money-god when I was a little boy. In truth, I don't hold any sort of moral opposition toward money. I will never refuse money, rather, I will welcome it with hands spread wide! Yet, I do relate to Gordon. I earned my degree in economics just recently and by god will I refuse any sort of work in that field. It is utterly meaningless. Naturally, if I were in a precarious position, facing starvation or homelessness, I would gladly get a job I hate. But if this aversion of mine were something closer to a principle, what would I do? Can one afford principles and morality when one has nothing? I don't know. As it so happens, I am relatively flexible, yet luckily, privileged enough to rarely have to resort to it. But even so, I sense that my outlook on life would hardly be any different from Gordon's. Of course, I find him to be a particularly dreadful sort of person, if not for his obnoxious behavior, then for his bland personality. But it works, it makes sense. Gordon simply makes tremendous sense as a character. I am still pondering over his last act. The ambiguity I was left with in regard to Gordon's future happiness and stability invited me to imagine myself in the very same situation and forced an uncomfortable time upon me, which I will spent exhausting all the possible scenarios, overthink a life that never was, but might have been or might be. No doubt, Orwell's best piece of fiction. Cynical. Bitter. Potent!

"Something deep below made the stone street shiver. The Tube-train, sliding through middle earth. He had a vision of London, of the western world; he saw a thousand million slaves toiling and grovelling about the throne of money. The earth is ploughed, ships sail, miners sweat in dripping tunnels underground, clerks hurry for the eight-fifteen with the fear of the boss eating at their vitals. And even in bed with their wives they tremble and obey. Obey whom? The money-priesthood, the pink-faced masters of the world. The Upper Crust. A welter of sleek young rabbits in thousand-guinea motor cars, of golfing stockbrokers and cosmopolitan financiers, of Chancery lawyers and fashionable Nancy boys, of bankers, newspaper peers, novelists of all four sexes, American pugilists, lady aviators, film stars, bishops, titled poets and Chicago gorillas."