A Flaneur in the Latin Quarter

Although the same place, the Latin Quarter has changed much since the time of Orwell’s residence in the place. While the place has likely retained some of the people similar to the ones Orwell, but have largely been swapped out with the personalities of shoppers, tourists, salespeople and the occasional flaneur. The storybook like characters of the hotel keeper woman, the suspicious apache and poor writer are presumably less likely to be located. The layout of the city has definitely changed as well. The shops he would have been accustomed to seeing. While they are the same buildings, they have been swapped out for the modern shops we would expect to see in a tourist area in modern day Paris equipped with expensive food stands, store entrances aiming to be enticing and a lively atmosphere. The culture of the area no longer a place where normal people live among differing financial standings like Orwell himself after being robbed and subsequently running out of money.

I agree with some Orwell’s observations of poverty. It depends on who you have to care for with the little money you have. If you are a single person and only have yourself to worry about and take care of it is much like the way he describes it. You worry about how to stretch your last dollar, sometimes surprisingly with the calm sense of finality. Simply accepting that you will be without with a surprising sense of detachment and understanding. It is usually this or the other extreme. To worry extensively about how to provide for oneself when lacking funds. I do not have recollection of experience feelings that range very much in the middle.

I would disagree wholly with Orwell when it comes to impoverishment coupled with having a person in your care. Poverty with a person in your charge is unquestionably more wearing. There is the constant wish to provide more and the frustration at one’s inability to do so. There is a more pressing need to rise from the situation for the sake of the person in your protection, probably more so if that person is a child. Guilt more than likely is a factor as well. Self-condemnation for not having done enough or made the right choices to avoid such a poor condition. The boredom does not exist because most time is spent inventing ways to make money to provide. Time is also spent encouraging the charge to get an education to bring them from destitution.

At one point in his narration, Orwell seems to suggest that being being poor is easier than having money. This is an interesting, yet untrue concept. It is true that being rich or having any amount of money comes with it’s problems and hardships, but those hardships can at least be survived with the comfort of their luxuries. Poverty is surely a more burdensome scenario.