Orwell’s ‘Inside The Whale’ is a long-form essay that opens as a book review of Henry Miller’s ‘Tropic of Cancer’, praising it for its exploration of the everyman on the streets of a 1920s Paris full of failed artists, whereas evolves into a look at the geopolitical tensions in the opening of the Second World War, its influence on literature and the hold of communism on the young writer. As usual in Orwell’s non-fiction, though this essay was long and sprawling in its topic, looking at Orwell’s early love of A.E Housman to criticising the writer who is too scared to write beyond the politically accepted, Orwell is extremely articulate and his arguments are fascinating. The title of the essay comes from his belief that like Jonah, Miller publishing in a time of political breakdown with the prominence of extremist powers, he situates himself ‘inside the whale’, where he is ultimately failing his duty as a writer in accepting the world as it is and choosing to ignore the prevalent concerns of the nation that should be addressed in literature.