Nostalgia and rejuvenation in time of crisis in George Orwell’s Coming up for air

Abstract EN

This paper is mainly intended to shed some critical and analytical lights on George Orwell’s fourth novel Coming up for Air (1939).

Basically, the paper attempts to respond to certain questions concerning the nature of this novel, the most important of which are the following: is Orwell trying to reflect a personal, a public, or (perhaps on a larger scale) a national issue? In other words, is he privately voicing the concerns of his soul, or is he just trying to comment on and criticize the dire impact of wars on the life of mankind? The paper is roughly divided into three parts.

The first introductory part tackles Orwell as a modern novelist and briefly traces the features of his writings.

The second part examines his Coming Up for Air in terms of the im/possibility of achieving rejuvenation on the side of the novel’s main character, George Bowling, through exploring certain personal and cultural issues featuring the man’s life and examining the invisible link between war, as a global phenomenon, and nostalgia, as a private one, as shown in Orwell’s novel.

The discussion of the novel ends up with a conclusion as the final part of the study.