In the description of the kitchen there is a mixture of humour, cinematic description and reportage, but the main style is reportage. The idea of the reportage is to shock the middle class. This is easily done as most of the middle class will have eaten in the type of restaurant that is being described. The use of hyperboles “then he pressed it lovingly into place with his fat, pink fingers, every one of which he has licked a hundred times that morning.” This is a clear exaggeration as it very unlikely that the chef would have liked his fingers “a hundred times that morning.” This is clearly done solely to disgust the reader. Orwell also uses onomatopoeias “slaps” in order to stress the manhandling of the food that is being prepared.
The humour found in this passage, is found in the stereo typical cook. He is fat and has “fat, pink fingers” this show he to be obviously fat but also like the meat that he serving. This is humorous and people at the time often thought that this was what your average cook was like. There is also the use of cinematic description found in the blow by blow description of the food preparation. The description is so detailed that you can imagine the actions taking place in front of you “He picks it up in his fingers and slaps it down, runs his thumb round the dish and lick it to taste the gravy,” This mixture of styles works well as they all compliment each other. The cinematic description makes the reportage seem more realistic and the humour lightens the whole seen taking away from the harsh reality of what Orwell is actually talking about.
Another example of a passage from the book where several literary writing styles are used is that which refers to the difference between the rich and the poor. The main style used is polemic writing. This can be seen in several ways throughout the passage. The choice of language that is used is clearly politically orientated. Words such as “fundamental” and “cultivated people” are ones that we hear often in modern politics. This therefore makes the text seem more like a political speech.
The use of rhetorical questions “which is the justice, which is the thief?” makes the text seem like Orwell is presenting his case to the middle class readers as though he is trying to argue his case and indoctrinate his readers. He adds weight to his argument by using personal experience as proof. “Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this well.” We can tell that this is aimed at the middle class by the use of sophisticated language “differentiated”. The use of rhetorical questions are also used to poke holes in the beliefs of the middle class by making them feel undermined in their beliefs by saying they don’t understand due to not having experience poverty themselves. “For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty?” This is not a good use of polemic writing. This is due to the fact that in this section Orwell takes the moral high ground, but in most of the book he is keen to insult tramps with such phrases as “ignorant” and it seems as though is criticism of society is very hypocritical. The addition of humour in surrounding passages in the chapter also makes this political point that a poor person “is a slave, and a wasted slave” sit uneasily in the book.
Chapter XXVII is one which incorporates many different styles, that is; reportage, bathos, polemic writing, cinematic description and rhetorical questioning. This makes this section of the book have a variety of styles to make a variety of points. The main constituent of this section is reportage. The whole area of the text is full of descriptions of the conditions, and daily occurrences of the tramps it gives us an inside into the daily lives of the London “downers”. There is and overload of adjectives that are used to push forward his ideas “tiny”, “barred”, “high” and then Orwell uses a simile in order to finish off the paragraph “it looked like a prison”. This way he uses a combination of reportage and cinematic imagery to make you fell and see what life is like for the average tramp I a “spike”. This, we can tell was tailored for the middle class as a social documentation due to the description of jobs, “his job is to supervise casuals, and he is generally a work house pauper” and the use of ironic rhetorical questions, “I had painted watercolours - who has not?”. Orwell also uses polemic writing to show that tramps are not just “dust darkened faces” and “agricultural labourers” but that “they were friendly”. Orwell wants to stress that is the tramps that are “friendly” and that “the officials steal your money”. Orwell also uses the Polemic writing to show that although the tramps have committed no crime they are treated worse than they would be in prison “the blankets were more like prison than a spike”. The tramps are also referred to as if they were animals on several occasions, “mangy”. This shows how the tramps are treated “like cattle” by society. Bathos is used on one occasion “Many offered me tobacco – cigarette-ends that is.” This emphasises the extreme poverty of the tramps. This seemingly random collection of writing styles is extremely successful as they work together to create a believable account of the lives of tramps. This is reinforced by his text being based on interviews and experience. This section is subtle and I think works on most people on a subconscious level.
Orwell uses a wide range of styles in order to express a vide rage of political, factual and humorous points. Orwell cleverly uses sever styles in a small passage in order to make any arguments feel balanced and in order to keep the reader interested. Although several styles are used it is, in most cases, that one is more predominant than the others. This gives the book a fluid overall style and enables Orwell to make the situations that he is describing seem more realistic.
