How The Poor Die

In the essay “How The Poor Die”George Orwell who was a novelist,essayist,critic and polemicist with socialist preoccupations,comments on the overall condition of the society through personal experiences.Here in the essay he seems an acute observer of social deprivation and injustice.Orwell describes through this essay the death of patients in poverty in the French hospital.

The writer spent several weeks in public wards in Paris where he saw the dying patients in extremely bad conditions.The essay is about the stay of poor ill people in the public wards of French hospital,their dirty surrounding,absence of proper medical treatment,medical facilities and food for them.Instead of recovering,the condition of patients became worse within time and most of them died.In this way the writer describes the plight and misery of the poor people of society,who sometimes under suppressing economic conditions are forced to take refuge in these hospitals and as a result these paupers are treated as specimen.These patients act as malingerers who make themselves useful by doing odd jobs and Orwell says that the lazy nurses seem to have connived in this conspiracy.This difference of social status is reflected when writer says that these patients are not given anesthesia to have their teeth extracted.And the general attitude was like “they didn’t pay,so why should they have an anesthetic that was the attitude”.

Though this belief has partly been done away with but it can still be seen in some sections of our civilized society.Ïn the public ward of a hospital you see horror that you don’t seem to meet with among people who manage to die in their homes as though certain diseases only attacked people at the lower income levels”.  Here through personal experience Orwell comments on the world’s inequal and defective social and economic systems which on one hand makes a rich the richest and a poor ,the poorest.This system in spite of bridging the gap widens it.

In the same way he meets a treatment which is given to animals specially to horses.The writer sees the blood drawing operation which is called cupping,being performed on half naked patients with horor.It is performed on the writer too.This operation is fit for animals.The open,ugly and cruel treatment of patients shocked him.By quoting this event he wants to say that the human beings have become stone-hearted and indifferent that they can not feel the pain of other human beings and give them little attention considering them animals.

The hospital is supposed to cure patients.However it is a place that makes people more diseased and brings death to them sooner.This is the basic theme of the essay and most of the irony arises out of it.The dirty rooms and foul smell make a patient feel sicklier.When patients look at each others’horrible conditions they begin  to feel the approach of death and destruction quite certain. “The characteristically gloomy architecture”of hospitals adds to their misery.The death of poor people in this hospital is the most horrifying description.Here he never feels very far from death.Ironically people with serious diseases and little money go on dying because they are always without proper care and attention.Non paying patients are shown as Chinese antiques.They have no more value than that of number 57 and 56 and so on.It is a great comment which writer passes on modern society in which documents and papers are more trustworthy and valuable than human beings.

A patient dying in public ward with open mouth and eyes is the perfect portrayal of today’s circumstances “Where everyday people are dying amongst strangers” Orwell comments at another place at natural and violent death.On the basis of his experience he says it is better “To die in your boots.he says that people will talk about the horrors of war,but what weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases”.Because after experiencing such a horrible scene of natural death he says that “Natural death,almost by definition means something slow,smelly and painful”.Even it makes a difference if one can achieve it in ones own home and not in public institution.

Orwell also observes the cruelty in different natures  of human beings.The French hospital actually represents the whole modern society and the poor patients are those people who are just toys and are at the mercy of the selfish,alien and inhuman people.Here the doctors and the medical students are the representatives of that indifferent section of society who use poor people just for their own benefit.Medical student and doctors treat patients indifferently rather cruelly as if they are some strange creatures who have no human sentiments.These doctors do not even bother to talk to their patients and know their feelings.

This alienation and cold behavior can also be observed among close relationships. As an old veteran near death,had his relatives by his bed side who apparently were dressed in mourning seemed to mourn his death but were actually scheming to get his legacy. After this example Orwell tells about a young lady who kneels beside her father’s bed.The writer expects fatherly gesture from her father as his hand moves under his bed sheet but he merely hands over a bed-bottle to his daughter who promptly takes from him and empties in to the receptacle.This situation is a pungent satire on the cold behavior of close relations as here we can notice that neither father has fatherly feelings nor the daughter has any love for her father.Even the closest relations are estranged and alienated from each other.

In the end the writer says that on the bases of such cruel history people dread to get admitted in to the hospital.Even they prefer prison on hospital.Here he discusses another attitude of society that is its superstitious behavior because people have associated different scary stories with different parts of hospital.These kinds of stories have great impact on the minds of patients.This reeking pain-filled hospital memory proved dark patch beneath the surface of the writer’s mind.

Therefore it can be concluded that through personal experience Orwell very accurately comments on the general attitude of society towards less facilitated people.Here in the real sense he proves to be a critic and observer of defective systems of society.