35 pages • 1 hour read
George OrwellKeep the Aspidistra Flying
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1936A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
An American journal, The Californian Review, pays Gordon to publish a poem. He vows to give half the money to Julia. With money, Gordon feels better: “It was queer how different you felt with all that money in your pocket. Not opulent, merely, but reassured, revivified, reborn” (154). Gordon insists on treating Ravelston and Rosemary to a meal at a “decent” restaurant and splurges on food and alcohol (155). Both Ravelston and Rosemary try to blunt Gordon’s excess by asking for the cheapest items and trying to get him to walk instead of taking a taxi. However, Gordon still manages to overspend.
Drunk, Gordon tries to force himself on Rosemary. She hits him and leaves. Ravelston reluctantly then takes Gordon to a pub in order to prevent his arrest for public drunkenness. At the pub, Gordon spills his beer over the pants of another patron and chats up two women he dubs “Dora” and “Barbara” while Ravelston looks for a taxi. Ravelston wants to keep Gordon from going away with the women, but he is too polite and ultimately accompanies them. Ravelston pays off “Barbara” without sleeping with her while Gordon passes out in “Dora’s” room.
Chapter 9 Summary
Gordon wakes up in a jail cell. He learns he got into a fight with a police sergeant and now faces a charge of drunk and disorderly conduct. Flaxman and Ravelston visit him in his cell. Ravelston insists on paying Gordon’s fee. As always, Gordon refuses, even though it means imprisonment. After Gordon goes to court, Ravelston pays the fine anyway.
Gordon thinks he might have lost his job and blames his troubles on money. Ravelston tells Gordon that Flaxman told Gordon’s employer he had the flu. Unfortunately, because Gordon identified himself as a poet in court, his conviction for drunk and disorderly soon makes it into the newspaper. This costs him his job. However, Ravelston offers to let Gordon stay in his apartment until he finds work.
Rosemary visits Gordon and asks him to go back to New Albion. They argue, and Gordon instead resolves to go out on the streets. However, he ends up depending on Ravelston. Eventually, the guilt he feels about this drives Gordon to accept a job with a new bookseller, Mr. Cheeseman. Gordon learns that Mr. Cheeseman is a dealer of rare books who wants to start a lending library but fears it will scare off his usual well-off clients. The library Cheeseman plans is “one of those cheap and evil little libraries […] which are springing up all over London and are deliberately aimed at the uneducated” (202). Gordon happily accepts the job since it brings him “nearer the mud” (202).
Chapters 8-9 Analysis
Here, Gordon hits his nadir. As he observes, “[I]f you have no money you don’t even know how to spend it when you get it” (187). Using his new money, he therefore splurges on everything he feels he has been denied, including food, alcohol, and social interaction. After driving off Rosemary, ending up in prison, and getting into Ravelston’s debt, Gordon only deepens his commitment to his war on money: “He was going down, down into the sub-world of the unemployed—down, down into God knew what workhouse depths of dirt and hunger and futility” (189). Gordon’s misfortunes in fact perversely please him, since they seem to confirm his views of the world, human nature, and capitalist society. What’s more, he believes sinking fully into poverty will free him from the last remnants of his middle-class upbringing—in particular, a preoccupation with “decency” (203).
Although Gordon is responsible for his actions and their consequences, his experiences in these chapters also extend the novel’s critique of 1930s English society. Gordon’s arrest costs him even his low-wage job and his apartment. Gordon is right that it is possible and in fact easy to slide down the social scale as a result of minor mistakes or infractions. Nevertheless, Gordon is comparatively lucky in that the support network provided by his friends and family is available to help him. Even Flaxman, the neighbor Gordon snubbed in Chapter 2, tries to save him from being fired over his arrest. Despite his best efforts, Gordon is not alone—something that the following chapters will make clearer.
Related Titles
By George Orwell
