Animal Farm: Book Review
Stephano Krau
Instructor Snyder A.WOH 200125 March 2010
Animal Farm: Book Review
Animal Farm is a dystopian, allegorical novel written by George Orwell and published in 1945.
Orwell was a novelist as well as a journalist, and is best known for his narrative documentaries and his novellas', including “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and “Animal Farm.” His novella “Animal Farm” mirrors events in Russia that lead up to the Revolution and lasted during “Stalin era,” and exhibits noteworthy symbolism between common farm animals and important communist/socialist leaders and political groups at the time, including Karl Marx/ Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. The actual plot of the novel follows a group of farm animals who overthrow a farm owner by force and set up their own community, in which all animals are treated equally, where all of them equally share the workload, and see every animal in Animal Farm as an equal to their society (an ideal communistic society). However, because of ignorance, greed, the illusion of status, and class differences (pigs being the more intellectual species), much of the political power sways towards the pigs, and eventually towards only Napoleon and his private army. The novel can also vaguely demonstrate how a communistic community can become influenced and manipulated by the people who are in control of it, showing that a perfect Utopian-like society is utterly impossible due to the selfishness and myopic thought of the human mind when given such power.
The grand transformations that take place in “Animal Farm” from the Seven Commandments to the One commandment are all due to the poor memory of most of the animals, their lack of experience and wisdom, the intentional deliverance of misleading propaganda by Squealer, and the abuse of power and manipulation of language carried on by Napoleon. Each time that Napoleon and/or the pigs commit an act that defies any of the Seven Commandments, Squealer would produce a logical
Instructor Snyder A.WOH 200125 March 2010
Animal Farm: Book Review
Animal Farm is a dystopian, allegorical novel written by George Orwell and published in 1945.
Orwell was a novelist as well as a journalist, and is best known for his narrative documentaries and his novellas', including “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and “Animal Farm.” His novella “Animal Farm” mirrors events in Russia that lead up to the Revolution and lasted during “Stalin era,” and exhibits noteworthy symbolism between common farm animals and important communist/socialist leaders and political groups at the time, including Karl Marx/ Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. The actual plot of the novel follows a group of farm animals who overthrow a farm owner by force and set up their own community, in which all animals are treated equally, where all of them equally share the workload, and see every animal in Animal Farm as an equal to their society (an ideal communistic society). However, because of ignorance, greed, the illusion of status, and class differences (pigs being the more intellectual species), much of the political power sways towards the pigs, and eventually towards only Napoleon and his private army. The novel can also vaguely demonstrate how a communistic community can become influenced and manipulated by the people who are in control of it, showing that a perfect Utopian-like society is utterly impossible due to the selfishness and myopic thought of the human mind when given such power.
The grand transformations that take place in “Animal Farm” from the Seven Commandments to the One commandment are all due to the poor memory of most of the animals, their lack of experience and wisdom, the intentional deliverance of misleading propaganda by Squealer, and the abuse of power and manipulation of language carried on by Napoleon. Each time that Napoleon and/or the pigs commit an act that defies any of the Seven Commandments, Squealer would produce a logical