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George Orwell and his Animal Farm George Orwell is a prominent English writer of the first half of the 20th century. He was recognized as one of the most influential satiric writers whose works have merited detailed scholarly attention. More than half a century after they were written, Orwells books are still much in demand. John Rodden, the researcher of his works, wrote in 1989 that Orwell was alive today because the topics of his works are alive today, and this is equally true in the twenty-first century. He is regarded as the greatest political writer in English during the twentieth century. George Orwells world fame is due to a combination of high esteem from intellectuals and immense popularity with the general reading public. Although he died at the early age of forty-six, his last two works.
Animal Farm has sold more than forty million copies and stands as the most influential book of political fiction of the twentieth century. Orwell was rather a fabulist than a novelist, and in fact, he always was a pamphleteer, who sought to join the English tradition that includes Defoe, Swift, Edmund Burke, Carlyle, and Ruskin, among many others. The satirical nature of his books and ridicule of the defects of society was derived by him from Jonathan Swift. There is no doubt that Orwell admired Swift enormously. On one occasion he even said that Gullivers Travels has meant more to me than any other book ever written. Orwell’s creative work is multi-aspect and he is often cited by other researchers.
Orwells influence, however, is not limited to literary studies: historians, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, and political scientists find Orwells books useful in their research. In his works, they find answers to such questions as the psychology of management, leadership theory, sociology of revolution, political culture, sacralization, and symbolism of power, social stratification, and social inequality, ideology and propaganda, conformity, etc. Animal Farm is one of the most famous books by George Orwell. It was published in 1945 and soon became a bestseller. The book is characterized by such features as fairy tale, fable, satire, and allegory. The writer tells the reader a fictional story as naive revolutionary ideals were gradually transformed into a hard pragmatic dictatorship. The phrase ‘all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others’ became the basic idea of the book. The story of the animals by Orwell resembles the ancient animal fables of Aesop about the defects of animals, where an attentive reader easily sees the vices of the people. Animal Farm is a parody of the dictatorship and of the Soviet political regime. This fact was confirmed by Orwell himself. He described the main focus of the book in a letter to his agent Leonard Moore in 1946.
Theme. Corruption.
The pigs who take over the leadership of Animal Farm after the rebellion depart from the ideals of Animalism, serving their own interests. The inequalities begin on a small scalea pail of milk here, a bushel of apples there. As the pigs gain more wealth and power over time, they change the rules of Animalism to suit their own desires and to maintain their control of the farm, eventually turning it into a totalitarian society.
Analysis.
Their decision to keep the choice bits of produce from the farm, the apples, and the milk, also reflects a sense of privilege. The excuse that they need the extra nutrients establishes inequality at the outset because it implies that mental labor is more important and difficult than physical labor. The animals grumble about this situation, which means they sense its unfairness, but Squealer silences them with the question that will become his trump card: Do you want Mr. Jones to come back? That is the last thing the animals want. In an instance of dramatic irony, this statement covers up the fact that some of the pigs’ practices are exactly like Jones’s, so in a sense, he has already returned.
Quotation
‘Comrades!’ he cried. ‘You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back!
Conclusion.
I knew at the beginning of the book that it was supposed to draw a parallel to the corruption of Russia’s socialist society, but I still wanted a happy ending. In the end, the pigs transformed their attitudes and mannerisms into human behavior, exactly the opposite of the original revolution ideal. The idea of an equal and utopian society seemed so promising and right, yet it seemed impossible for the pigs not to fall into the habits of man by being greedy, controlling, and deceitful. I wish that the ending had another revolution but this time the rebellion would be against the pigs’ rule. Maybe Boxer has a son and he becomes the new leader or something like that. In reality, I know that Orwell ended the book that way for a reason, but it’s still a discouraging ending at best.
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