George Orwell and The Definition of “Tramp” (noun)

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solutions
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George Orwell and The Definition of “Tramp” (noun)

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: The Source of The Definition of “Tramp” (noun)
From: Solutions
Date: Sun, February 1, 2015 9:13 pm
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
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Dear John,

In our exchange of e-mails yesterday regarding whether you are bitter vs. focusing on the future, you claimed the latter and made a new and impassioned plea for taking action against Corporate America’s replacing traditional pension plans with Sec. 401(k) plans.

At the end of your statement on that subject, you claimed that the definition of the term “tramp” derives from the 1800’s during English industrialization when the workers who had left the farms to work the factories and mines and who became injured or ill, were forced to “tramp” from “flop house” to “flop house” because they were only permitted to stay a few short days in any particular English “flop house.”

What is your source for that information?

Your friend,

Solutions


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: The Source of The Definition of “Tramp” (noun)
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, February 1, 2015 10:22 am
To: Solutions
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Dear Solutions,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.

George Orwell is most famous for “1984” about “Big Brother” controlling the tiniest details of everyone’s existence.

Orwell’s next-most famous work is probably “Animal Farm” making fun of the organization of the old Soviet Union (aka Stalinism) as a result of having fought on the Communist side in the Spanish Civil War.

Most college graduates are familiar with “1984” and might even be aware of “Animal Farm.”

From those two seminal works, they might get the misimpression that George Orwell was solely a fiction writer!!!

But many of his most important works were non-fiction.

Perhaps his most important work was “Homage to Catalonia” which was George Orwell’s personal account of his own participation in the Spanish Civil War and his views on the war and its ramifications.

Though right up there with it in terms of importance was his first full-length work, “Down and Out in Paris and London,” about poverty.

He was writing about poverty first hand!!!

And he was indeed a “tramp” as described in the second part of his book!!!

And he took the time to explain what being a “tramp” meant, both with respect to the derivation of the term and with respect to what being a tramp meant in the constant and usually-doomed painful struggle to survive!!!

Thank you again for your inquiry.

Your friend,

John K.

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