Sharply, the menacing wind sweeps over…
"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."
Keep The Aspidistra Flying is George Orwell’s third novel, first published in 1936, which provides social commentary on life in the grim and austere environment of Thirties Britain, heavily inspired by Orwell’s own experiences.
Our 'Hero' is Gordon Comstock, a moderately intelligent, yet angry, bitter, repressed, snarky, sweary failed poet and Jerkass extraordinaire. Despising the capitalist system and everything it stands for, Gordon vows to distance himself from the "money-god" as far as possible, giving up his relatively comfortable career at the New Albion advertising agency for a dead-end job working in a bookshop. Trouble is, he hates the resulting lifestyle, counting every last wretched coin, almost as much.
And despite the best efforts of his long-suffering girlfriend Rosemary and his best friend and editor Philip Ravelston, the Idle Rich publisher of an obscure Socialist magazine, Gordon seems set to continue his gleefully nihilistic downward spiral further and further into miserable poverty…
A movie adaptation was released in 1997 (As A Merry War outside the UK), starring Richard E. Grant as Gordon and Helena Bonham Carter as Rosemary, providing a Lighter and Softer Romantic Comedy interpretation of the story.
Keep The Aspidistra Flying provides examples of:
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Gordon, upon cashing his $50 paycheck, spends some of the money on drinks. This leads him to get drunk as a skunk and make a series of rash decisions, such as buying the most expensive food he can (barely) afford, telling people to keep the change when he overpays them, trying to force himself upon Rosemary in an alleyway, and finally renting a pair of prostitutes for himself and Ravelston. The next morning he wakes up in a jail cell, having been thrown in there for punching a constable in the face when the police raided the whorehouse. News of his drunken antics and arrest make it into the local newspaper, leading Gordon's boss to find out and fire him.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: Downplayed, but after Gran'pa Comstock died, his surviving family buried him under a massive granite tombstone, since they really wanted to make sure he stayed there.
- Apathetic Clerk: Played with. In his job at the bookstore, Gordon is all smiles and charm... On the surface. He really despises the job almost as much as he despises the customers.
- Author Avatar: Gordon, for Orwell. He's inspired by a period in the author's life where he also worked in a bookshop, complimented by the occasional poem for a literary magazine, though this one was called Adelphi rather than Antichrist.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Comstocks, so much. Gordon's paternal grandfather, "Gran'pa Comstock" was an iron-fisted patriarch and successful businessman who bullied and traumatised his eleven children so much that all grew up to be dismal failures surviving on his diminishing inheritance. The Comstock brood were all so terrified of their father that only one, that being Gordon's father, John, got married while he was alive, the rest too fearful of his potential retaliation.
- Boarding School of Horrors: Gordon's family had just (quite literally) enough money to send him to one of these. Unsurprisingly, he hated it, and was bullied relentlessly for being poor, which sparked his rabid hatred of money.
- Bourgeois Bohemian: In a period-accurate version of the trope, Gordon’s friend Philip Ravelston hails from an old-money family, yet publishes the melodramatically-named magazine Antichrist which espouses radical Socialism. Ravelston is rich enough that he can afford to crank out this very obscure publication, overpay Gordon and several similar writers and lead a relatively sumptuous lifestyle, all the while lacking any actual job.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Downplayed - Gordon possesses an uncanny talent for writing advertising slogans, but despises this job so much he’d rather live in self-imposed poverty than receive a decent copywriter’s salary.
- Brotherhood of Funny Hats: A Real Life fraternal order, the Buffaloes
, is briefly mentioned, a group of whom meet in a pub near Gordon's lodgings and spend most of their time getting hammered. Gordon is (incorrectly) convinced that their leader is known as a 'Grand Herbivore'. - Cool Car: Deconstructed, in a way. When a sleek and beautiful luxury automobile passes Gordon in the street, he shifts his near-constant stream-of-consciousness ranting to denounce the sort of people who cruise around in "thousand guinea motor cars"note during the austere times of the Thirties.
- Creator In-Joke: The "Money-God" poem Gordon spends most of the novel composing (beginning with "Sharply, the menacing wind sweeps over...") is in fact one of Orwell's own poems, St. Andrew's Day, 1935, published in the Adelphi. It's easy to assume that it was written only for the novel.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite his caustic personality, nihilistic beliefs and constant Jerkassery, Gordon wasn't quite enough of an asshole not to take responsibility for getting Rosemary pregnant. Instead, he concedes defeat in his 'war against the money-god', and gets his old job back to support her and his child.
- A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: At one point Gordon receives a $50 cheque from an American magazine for one of his poetry submissions, and after cashing it he finds himself about ten pounds richer. Despite privately vowing to give his sister half the money to repay an earlier debt, the money quickly goes to his head, and he blows it all in a single night on expensive food, lots of drinks, and a pair of tarts for himself and Ravelston.
- Idealised Sex: Inverted. When Rosemary eventually does have sex with Gordon (after much pleading on his part) when he's reduced to a wretched existence in a derelict slum, it's uncomfortable, mechanical, and wholly devoid of passion. Oh, and she gets pregnant too.
- Impoverished Patrician: Gordon descends from a "middle-middle-class" family, who were comfortably well-off in the Victorian era, but due to his paternal grandfather being an Abusive Parent extraordinaire, his father, aunts and uncles were all too weak-willed to do anything more with his money than lose it making dull yet foolish investments. The inheritance being split eleven ways probably didn't help matters though.
- Irony:
- Gordon despises money and capitalism, but can still be unbearably snobby towards working-class people.
- When Gordon and Rosemary take a trip to the country midway through the book, he attempts to have sex with her in a secluded grove, but she refuses since Gordon doesn’t have a condom, sending him off onto a rant about this being yet another thing he is forced to pay for… But when she does have unprotected sex with him later on, she gets pregnant, forcing Gordon back into his job at New Albion to look after the child.
- It's All Junk: Gordon throws his London Pleasures manuscript in the sewer after realizing that he has more important things to worry about, like earning enough money to support Rosemary and their baby.
- Jerkass: Gordon. He’s rude to everyone, including his Love Interest and only friend, (but reserves a particular hatred for the bookshop customers), and upon receiving a significant sum of money from an American magazine for a piece of writing, blows half of it going on a bender and gets the other half stolen by a prostitute, when he was supposed to be using the cash to pay back his sister.
- Loser Protagonist: It's very, very hard to like the pathetic Gordon, being an insufferable snob, Straw Nihilist, and Grade-A Jerkass in one moth-eaten package.
- Most Writers Are Writers: Granted, Gordon isn't a very good writer, but this trope still applies.
- Nice Guy: Ravelston. He may be naive and idealistic, but is a genuinely kind man who goes above and beyond anything a decent friend would be expected to do for Gordon, including getting his mediocre work published, paying off fines and patiently listening to many a vitriol-laden rant. However, their friendship is finally wrecked when Gordon is forced to sleep in Ravelston's flat for several weeks.
- Rich Bitch: Ravelston's girlfriend, Hermione Slater, is one. Although this is mainly because her primary personality trait revolves around hating the 'lower classes'.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Gordon will use the word "bloody" in at least every third sentence. Obviously this probably wouldn't count by today's standards, but in 1936 it certainly did.
- Starving Artist: Gordon is a poet, but his only work Micenote sold incredibly poorly and exists seemingly only to gather dust on shelves. He writes the odd piece for a magazine, usually Ravelston’s Antichrist, but overall his work does little to improve his living situation. And when he does get a substantial payment from a different magazine, he blows the whole lot going on a bender.
- Straw Misogynist: Played with. Gordon "pretends" to be one sometimes when he's talking to Rosemary. They are both of the understanding that he's doing it ironically, but it's rather hard to deny that Gordon is genuinely misogynistic as well, given his attitude towards her.Gordon: What does any women want except a stable income and two babies and a semi-detached villa in Putney with an aspidistra in the window?
- Straw Nihilist: Gordon seems to hate pretty much everything - rich people, poor people, books, writing, advertising, capitalism, socialism, and so on and so forth. He's secretly hoping for war to come and burn it all to the ground. In a way, he got his wish three years after the book was published.
- Traveling Salesman: Flaxman, a large, loud and jovial man, and Gordon's 'neighbour' in the boarding-house, is one of these. He's actually much better off than Gordon, but his wife kicked him out after discovering that he had failed to tell her that he had received a substantial bonus — and that he had blown it all on a fun night with some young ladies in Paris.
