Coming Up for Air

In 1938 at a point when Orwell had developed a distinct and known literary voice (but was not yet famous) he decided to write a novel that would achieve three things: warn against war remind people of the values of traditional English life and offer a glimmer of hope for the future during a dark time. Coming Up for Air released in 1939 does this and is also in the words of Orwell biographer Bernard Crick the most English of his novels. In this first-person novel 45-year-old George Bowling journeys back to the home of his boyhood. Bowling who has won some money betting on horse racing keeps the news hidden from his wife and children and decides to use the winnings to finance a trip to his childhood home. This to Bowling is coming up for air. He has faced the unpleasant fact that a war is coming and wants to go to a tranquil place where he doesnt have to think about it for a time. He also wants a brief vacation away from his West Bletchley suburban London homes stresses: he wishes to get away from his bullying wife as well as the ceaseless pressure to earn a living. Bowling has idyllic memories of his childhood home in Lower Binfield from the period before World War I. However when he returns not surprisingly everything has changed. It is not the tranquil place of fishing ponds that he remembers (his fishing pond has turned into a trash dump). The town has grown; it has a munitions plant; his childhood home has been turned into a tea shop; and his old girlfriend Elsie is now old and ugly. However as the fat and toothless (he has false teeth) Bowling says to himself no woman would ever look at him again unless paid—an acknowledgement of his own loss of looks.