Down and Out in Paris and London: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Orwell and Boris try in vain to find work. Boris tries hard to hide his limp, but once a hiring manager detects it, they’re sent on their way. Their search is desperate and takes them to the railway yards, where they’re passed over for Frenchmen, and to the circus where they hope to apply for a job that involves cleaning up litter and letting a lion jump through their legs, but a line of fifty men waiting to try out discourages them.

Then Orwell answers a letter he receives from an agency about giving English lessons to an Italian man, but when he inquires further, he finds that the man has left the country. Later, Orwell goes to Les Halles, Paris’s fresh food market, to try to become a porter. Sensing Orwell’s uselessness, a fat man in a bowler hat challenges him to lift an impossibly heavy crate, then sends him away. Orwell sees four men lifting the crate and realizes the man was trying to spare him the humiliation of finding out he wasn’t suited for the job.

Boris receives a letter from Yvonne, one of his former mistresses, and hopes to find money inside. Instead, he finds excuses. Yvonne is struggling, too. Her sister has been ill. She can’t possibly lend him any money at this time. Boris takes to his bed in despair.

Orwell and Boris live in squalor together, pooling their money to buy food, bickering over coffee, and commiserating over their filthy state. Boris suffers hunger and pain and indignities at the hands of his roommate. He tells Orwell a story to illustrate what Jews are like. In the story, a Jewish man offers his daughter to Boris, who was a soldier at the time, for 50 francs. Then Orwell and Boris play chess on a makeshift board fashioned from an old packing case and Boris explains to Orwell that the rules of chess are the same as the rules of love and war. Win at one and you can win at the others.