Using barnyard animals, it provides (practically in bullet point form, and in less than 200 pages) over 200 years of knowledge about leadership and power, distilling all of the mistakes great (and not-so-great) leaders have made over time. Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and said, "I'm going to be the President of the United States one day"? Or-let's take it down a notch-have you ever run for class president on a platform of better cafeteria food and free sodas for all?Īs your election gift, we'll wrap up for you our very own dog-eared copy of Animal Farm. What Is Animal Farm About and Why Should I Care? If you're going to get a lecture about the evils of totalitarianism, wouldn't you rather hear it from a talking horse? But why animals? Why not just write an essay? ( Orwell was pretty good at the ol' essay-writing gig, after all.) Or why not write a novel with actual people, like his 1949 political satire 1984 ? Brutal, drunken humans represent Western leaders in Animal Farm -and the animals of Manor Farm are more afraid of the humans regaining control than they are of the Stalinist pigs. Not that he saw Western leaders as much better. And that's where Animal Farm comes in: it shows Stalin's version of communism as the exact opposite of socialist values-as a brutal, oppressive, and unequal regime. In fact, his time in Spain made him realize "how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries" ( source ). But Orwell quickly realized that the communists he was fighting for could be just as totalitarian and oppressive as the fascists. Their enemy was Spanish leader Francisco Franco and his fascist followers, who believed in strong, militaristic national identity united under an authoritarian leader-think the Wizard World under Voldemort, or Mordor under Sauron. Since communism is an extreme form of socialism, Orwell actually fought alongside communists in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s. (Does that sound crazy? There are co-ops and employee-owned businesses today that operate in just that way.) In other words, Walmart should be owned by Walmart employees, rather than by the Walton family. Let's just say that socialists believe that the means of production (like factories or businesses) should be controlled by the workers for the good of everyone, rather than controlled by a tiny subset of owners for their own profit. In fact, he was a socialist, a simple word for a complex and varied set of beliefs. When publishing house Faber & Faber rejected Orwell, an editor pointed out that it was simply distasteful to depict Stalin as "a pig."īut Orwell was no knee-jerk anticommunist. Stalin may have been bad, but Hitler was worse. Criticism of Stalin wasn't banned in wartime British press, but it wasn't exactly encouraged, either. You see, Animal Farm takes a blow at the Soviet Union, especially its leader Joseph Stalin -but the Soviet Union was an ally in the U.S.'s fight against Nazi Germany in World War II. In fact, no one took him up on it until 1945, and even then readers weren't too keen on it. (In fact, we have a sneaking suspicion that you're here because you're being required to read it.) But when Orwell wrote the book in 1943-44, he could hardly find a publisher. It’s a biting satire about tyrannical governments and a dark warning about the fate of communism in Russia. But George Orwell's Animal Farm is no Jim Henson-inspired comedy about a pig who just wants to be a sheepdog, or bittersweet tale about interspecies love. And talking horses and birds and cows, for that matter. In fact, there are a lot of talking pigs. Move over, Babe and Wilbur : there's a new talking pig in town. Want more deets? We've also got a complete Online Course about Animal Farm, with three weeks worth of readings and activities to make sure you know your stuff.
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