come up for air only to find bombing planes hovering around, buzzing in your ears, breaking promises of peace. come up for air only to suffocate another way, the air choked with pollution, the lands housing parasites—where fishes should be, you'll find tin cans and cigarette butts and dickheads who mistake the picturesque for nature's best kept gifts. come up for air and acknowledge the break before another descent. what is left? what remains? what is new? what continues? swallow the novelty. move before looking closer. it's all fake; you're archaic and they're all ghosts playing house, only you're the fool who can see through.

run back to the bleak, now dressed in that sweet and sinful nostalgia. you'll think it's home. 

(you're now the fool who looks past.)

...but you see, Mr. Bowling, you're still lucky. you're a man. you could go wherever. you can spend that seventeen quid on alcohol. you can contemplate the inevitable war. you can fancy taking in a woman. you can hate. you can hope. you can even dare to change things. your wife, Hilda, cannot. the kids are at home. the chores are for her taking. the endless meals she must place on the table. the kids and a manchild (you) to raise, to care for. she worries about the immediate future, because her present is eternal.

besides, men like you created the shit show you are in. they're men like you, only they are drunk with power, and you're drunk with low-quality booze. you come home with your stinky breath and false teeth, waiting for dinner and a fresh set of clean clothes. you at least have a life that's yours. Hilda lives for others so suck it up, that air you've rambled on about for 270 pages.

this is me being honest as you've inspired me somehow. you've said a lot of right things. but you don't have to vilify women. you know they have it worse.

The main character of George Orwell’s Coming up for Air, George Bowling, is a bad person. He’s sexist, selfish, a lousy dad and a cheater. However, he’s also human. He is so human. Despite the subject of this book (who we spend an extreme amount of time with and see everything through the eyes of) being just about the most average man from the 1930s that you could ever meet, Orwell manages to make him into a relatable vessel to explain the decline of the Western middle class after World War I. This decline is influenced by several things, like:

•Suburbanization, which separated many millions of people from the natural scenery of the rural places they grew up in
•The industrial revolution, which furthered the effects of suburbanization that I just mentioned, since instead of the spread out English countryside of before, the industrial revolution encouraged population (and therefore, economic activity) to be packed into a few big cities. This (I believe) led to the domination of big business over small shops, killing a lot of economic activity
•The nuclear family, which forces people into unhappy marriages at young ages, causing them to raise a child they don’t love, who will then repeat the cycle due to not having a happy childhood

The book is structured in a strange way because half of it is a recap of George’s childhood, and that half is located in the middle, not the first or second half. However, I do think this is for the best. Orwell has an absolute knack for explaining things in emotionally conductive and effective ways. One of the most common phrases in the whole story is “you know the _____.” George will be describing a bridge or a person or a building or the inside of a church and he won’t dumb it down; he’ll connect it to what he knows you’ve already seen before, and it’s a very effective tool. He wastes no words in describing scenes and he does it almost perfectly. There is a ton of description, though, and some of the chapters can drag. I wouldn’t blame you for skipping a page or two every once in a while. 

Coming Up For Air is about the contrast between then and now. Fulfillment and monotony. Young and old. How the passing of time can change your view on how something actually played out. George Bowling acknowledges that he sees his memories of his youth through rose-tinted glasses—yet, he still yearns for what he had back then. He still wants to escape his marriage and fish in the sun for hours like he did when he was a kid, running around in fields until sunset. Yes, he’s a bad person, but that’s because George Orwell is not a liar. He understands people on a deep level, especially the middle class, and that’s exactly who the main character of this novel is; a  middle class man who grew up in the early twentieth century, portrayed how he truly is. 

I highly recommend this book if you’re interested in reading about the relatable and insightful thoughts and feelings of the average man who lived through the first world war.

رواية "الصعود إلى الهواء" لجورج أورويل،   تتناول الرواية موضوعات مثل الديكتاتورية، المراقبة، وفقدان الخصوصية، مما يجعلها ذات صلة كبيرة بالقضايا الاجتماعية والسياسية الحالية.

أسلوب أورويل في السرد قوي وفعال، حيث يتمكن من خلق جو من القلق والترقب. الشخصيات،  تُظهر الصراع الداخلي بين الرغبة في الحرية والواقع القاسي الذي يعيشه تحت نظام قمعي. الرواية مليئة بالرموز والدلالات، مما يجعلها مادة خصبة للتحليل والنقاش.

ومع ذلك، يمكن اعتبار بعض أجزاء الرواية بطيئة بعض الشيء، حيث يركز أورويل على بناء العالم الذي يعيش فيه الشخصيات، مما قد يجعل القارئ يشعر بالملل في بعض الأحيان. كما أن النهاية قد تكون محبطة للبعض، حيث تترك شعورًا باليأس.

بشكل عام، "الصعود إلى الهواء" رواية تحمل رسائل قوية حول السلطة والحرية، وتعد قراءة مهمة، لكنها قد تحتاج إلى صبر من القارئ بسبب أسلوبها السردي ومحتواها الكثيف. تقييمها يمكن اعتباره متوسطًا، حيث تجمع بين نقاط القوة في الفكرة والعمق، وبعض العيوب في الإيقاع والشخصيات.