Animal Farm

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Summary: funniest ive ever read
Review: omg
after reading charlotte's web!!!! READ IT AFTER CHARLOTTE'S WEB!!
it's bloody hilarious

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Summary: Horses or Frogs?
Review: One of the marks of a great work of literature is that it can be read on different levels. George Orwell's Animal Farm is such a work. We can read it as a child's fable or as a description of the 1917 Russian Revolution with Snowball-Trotski, Napoleon-Stalin, Old Major-Lenin (or is it Marx?) and Squealer-a collection of various Stalinist toadies- providing the history lesson. That can be instructive and we come away feeling that we understand the fundamental dynamics of totalitarianism, in all quite contented with ourselves.

That would however be missing the most important point for Americans today that is brought out in the book. Dictatorship doesn't arise in one fateful moment, people don't become manipulated pawns overnight, rights are not eroded or even reversed with one blatant stroke of a pen on a governmental decree. If anything the history of 20th Century dictatorships shows us that this is a gradual process as in Orwell's book. Napoleon's plans are put into effect slowly; the laws are changed methodically one by one, at night when the animals are asleep. History itself is taken away and washed of any conflicting elements that displease the powers in control or bring up uncomfortable questions. Gross inequalities are said to be necessary, unavoidable, even positive, while a strong police presence backed with cruel punishments discourage any overt opposition. The most important element of control is to convince the people that things are "better" than before without actually telling them what the "before" was like. Convince them that theirs is the best of all possible worlds without really comparing it to anything else. Arouse their sense of patriotism and use popular symbols to distract and confuse. All this is shown in the book to be very effective in establishing and maintaining control, all the while the real condition of the animals/citizens only worsens, the manipulation and domination only becomes more obvious, more difficult to rationalize and explain away.

Now for the clincher - How has OUR country changed in the last 20 years? Are we as a people more manipulated and dominated by unseen and unaccountable plutocratic elites, less in control of our supposedly democratic government than in 1980? Are we, the common people, not confronted today with a far more refined, more subtle type of control and domination, which allows us steadily decreasing room to move about, a constantly constricting pen so to speak, whose artificial veneer of "liberty" is wearing increasingly thin? Is it even allowed in polite company to pose such questions?

A biologist friend of mine tells me that if a frog is put into a pan of hot water it will jump out, but put the same frog in a pan of cool water and gradually increase the temperature to boiling, the frog will stay in the pan until his eyes burst. Perhaps we Americans should ask ourselves where we are, metaphorically speaking, in the Animal Farm herarchy. Are we at least hard-working horses who occasionally question what is done supposedly in our name, or are we simple frogs, sweating now, only semi-sentient, but still smug and stupid in our belief that things will only get better?

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Summary: Animal Farm's double meaning
Review: SHOULD BE --- AND HOPEFULLY STILL IS --- REQUIRED READING FOR ALL MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS. IF EVERY AMERICAN WERE TO READ THIS MASTERPIECE, THERE WOULD BE A GREATER LIKELIHOOD THAT OUR GRANDCHILDREN WOULD RETAIN THE FREEDOMS THAT SO MANY GENERATIONS OF AMERICANS HAVE FOUGHT AND DIED FOR.

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Summary: A Sleeper
Review: This story was incredible when it first came out during the rise of the Soviet Union, and with a certain someone in office, it's even more effective today. When you know who everyone represents in the story and keeping it in your mind that it really did happen, this can be horrific and smart. Orwell's allergories live on today.

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Summary: Brilliant allegory, and fun reading as well.
Review: Though short and not really written for philosophy scholars in mind (far too straightforward and readable for that), George Orwell's brilliant novella Animal Farm is one of the strongest, most damning indictments of Communism and totalitarian regimes I've ever read. Not bad for a story whose primary characters are talking barn animals.

Written in 1946 and intended as an allegory paralleling the revolution of the Bolsheviks and the eventual rise of Stalin in post-WWI Russia, Animal Farm replaces the Communist intellectuals and elites with pigs (Major, Snowball, and Napoleon, who are Marx, Trotsky, and Stalin respectively), the smartest animals on the barnyard; the secret police is represented by ruthless canines; the sheep are mindless followers of the regime ("four legs good, two legs bad"); Boxer the horse represents the common, downtrodden worker and hero/"true believer" of Socialist ideology (not surprising as Orwell was a proponent of democratic socialism); and the humans are symbols for the fallen Czar (Jones) and Hitler and the rise of Nazi Germany (Frederick). The story has simple though excellent characters (my favorite is the cynical donkey Benjamin) many of whom arouse both our sympathy and our contempt as the idealism of the Revolution is turned on its head by elites corrupted by power; the cure becomes poisonous, as the chilling final chapter reiterates.

Many elements of this book have entered the popular lexicon under our noses ("some animals are more equal than others," "four legs good, two legs bad" etc.). The story itself has been translated to animation and film (with varying degrees of success) and was even adopted by Pink Floyd to create their 1977 masterpiece Animals. But nothing can usurp the original novella's importance. Along with 1984, it is perhaps Orwell's best piece of work, and definitely his most enjoyable.

I've noticed that some of the reviewers here (particularly the one or two-star reviews) are junior-high students who have read this for their English classes, and don't exactly "get" it. Don't start wading into this book without some knowledge of Communism and Russian history first.

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Summary: Thoughts about the classic political fable
Review: What can anyone say about Animal Farm that hasn't been said already? Probably nothing, but I'll try anyway. Virtually everyone knows the story of George Orwell's tale. It is not a novel, but a fable, with little dialogue but plenty of narrative. On a small rural farm in England the animals rise up against the drunken, abusive farmer and drive him off the land. The parallel, of course, is supposed to be the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Based on the teachings of an old pig, Old Major, the animals define their ideal society of animals in which everyone will work together and think together, but the pigs under the control of the brainy Snowball, the despotic Napoleon, and the scheming Squealer soon betray the ideals. Of course, Old Major is really Lenin, Napoleon is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, and Squealer is a mystery, just who does he represent, anyway? Stalin didn't have an official spokesman that I know of.

My question is how accurate this conventional wisdom really is. The parallels are clear, but not exact and I'm not entirely sure Orwell really meant this as a perfect revolution betrayed. This was one of his later books, and he had been disillusioned by communism for quite some time. I wonder if he really believed better leadership would have saved the Soviet Union from madness.

There are some half hidden clues sprinkled throughout. For one, we see that even from the start not all the animals were impressed with Animalism. Mollie, the show horse, is certainly not in favor of it. She works little and would gladly have the return of humans if only she can get her sugar cubes and ribbons back. Likewise, the unnamed cat never helps out, nor does the raven. Orwell seems to be pointing out, however subtly, that communism must be either embraced wholeheartedly or made compulsory by force (which eventually happens to the animals that don't leave as Mollie does). The problem is right there at the start. Another example we see is Snowball. Now clearly Snowball the brainy pig is supposed to represent Trotsky, being the smart talkative one, the opponent of Napoleon, and eventually being exiled and made the center of every half-baked conspiracy theory thereafter. So Orwell is saying Trotsky would have made everything alright? He would have been better than Stalin, of course, but Orwell sneaks in little hints here as well. Snowball devotes considerable effort to planning the windmill. The windmill that will mean the end of their troubles. It will create a three-day workweek, electricity for the farm, and other various useful things. Where will the generator come from? No answer. Cables? No answer. Now if presumably Snowball is the better purist of Animalism, he would never sell-out and engage in trade with humans the way Napoleon does later. So what is the answer? I don't think this is an oversight on Orwell's part. The story is too tightly constructed with no wasted words. Certainly the greater events do overshadow these points, but could Orwell be saying that even the greatest leadership would have only delayed the inevitable? It is, I think, worth considering.

Animal Farm remains to this day among the best modern fables ever written. Whatever Orwell's exact beliefs at the time it was penned, it is clear that he had been systematically disillusioned with communism, a process that started as early as the Spanish Civil War (see Homage to Catalonia for his first hand account of that conflict). Unlike far too many people holding similar beliefs, Orwell was not about to stand by a group he could clearly see was not representing his views, or the views of any decent person anywhere. By late in life, with works like Animal Farm and the later 1984 Orwell's writing has become that of an anti-totalitarianist first and foremost. He pays homage in Animal Farm to the early spirit of the revolution, but it is a doomed effort from the start. The first harvest is better than average, but it was already ripe and ready for picking. It's downhill from there. It would seem that Animalism/Communism was destined to fail no matter what. Perhaps this is why Orwell has been called every conservative's favorite Communist, but it seems clear here that by 1945, even when the Soviet Union was a British ally in the war against the one form of government Orwell hated more, he still had the vision to see rot and corruption, and worse, for what it really was. So besides being an enjoyable and intelligent author to read, Orwell shows in Animal Farm that he is among the century's most gifted political essayists.