In the semi-pornographic crime novel Orwell decries the breaking down of all taboos as the author attracts readers by violence, cruelty and sexual sadism.
He refers to "realism", meaning the doctrine that might is right, by writing "The growth of 'realism' has been the great feature of the intellectual history of our own age.
It is important to notice that the cult of power tends to be mixed up with a love of cruelty and wickedness for their own sakes.
"Evidently there are great numbers of English people who are partly Americanised in language, and one ought to add, in moral outlook.
In America, both in life and fiction, the tendency to tolerate crime, even to admire the criminal so long as he is successful, is very much more marked."