Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

Coal is the fundamental energy of Orwell's England. Coal energy heats homes, cooks food, and provides the motive force for all the machinery that drives the Industrial complex. Without coal, England's economy would vanish. Thus, Orwell examines the methods of coal production and mining. In England—particularly in Northern England—coal mines consist of deep vertical shafts traversing to coal seams that lie at whichever angle and depth they are found. Coal mines follow coal seams and hence are haphazard affairs, full of heat, noise, confusion, darkness, and foul air. Most coal mines are little more than random mazes of interconnected cramped spaces. At the end of a vast maze of traverses lies the actual coal face itself—a shiny black wall of perhaps three or four feet in height. The overhead and underfoot rock faces are not...