Animal Farm and 1984

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Summary: Future perfect
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No animal may drink alcohol "to excess"

A fairy tale or a nightmare? It all began with a dream by Major, a Middle White boar, of equality, and freedom from oppression. Maybe not in our life comrade, but eventually.

The dream brings a song. Intolerable conditions lead to revolution. As time passes things change; not exactly as planned.

There are two striking parts to this tale that stand out. First when Boxer is sent to the hospital and Benjamin reads the side of the van "Horse Slaughterer." Secondly there was a party in the farm house as the pigs were playing cards with the men, two aces of spades showed up. An argument ensues. Then a realization was drawn by the creatures outside looking in as they "...looked from pig to man, and man to pig, and from pig to man again..."
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Deviates corrected for their own good

In a society that has eliminated many imbalances, surplus goods, and even class struggle, there are bound to be deviates; Winston Smith is one of those. He starts out, due to his inability to doublethink, with thoughtcrime. This is in a society that believes a thought is as real as the deed. Eventually he graduates through a series of misdemeanors to illicit sex and even plans to overthrow the very government that took him in as an orphan.
If he gets caught, he will be sent to the "Ministry of Love" where they have a record of 100% cures for this sort of insanity. They will even forgive his past indiscretions.
Be sure to watch the three different movies made from this book:
1984 (1954) Peter Cushing is Winston Smith
1984 (1956) Edmond O'Brien is Winston Smith
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) John Hurt is Winston smith

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Summary: "Animal Farm 1984 & Socialist Farm today" by RexCurry.net
Review: Animal Farm is a novel by George Orwell, in which farm animals overthrow their owner and adopt socialism -- with predictable results. While the idea of overthrowing enslavers is appealing, why do the over-throwers so often embrace socialism with its monstrous results?

1984 is a novel by George Orwell, in which the world has adopted socialism -- with predictable results.

It is odd that Orwell was a socialist for so long, and yet the bizarre society he describes in Animal Farm was surpassed only in socialist places like the socialist trio of atrocities: the National Socialist German Workers' Party slaughtered 21 million, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics slaughtered 62 million killed; and the People's Republic of China slaughtered 35 million. (numbers from Professor R. J. Rummel's article in the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999) also available on Amazon). And don't forget Cambodia, Cuba, etc. In fact, the entire socialist "Wholecaust" was much worse than the Holocaust, which was part of it.

The unique political allegory, Animal Farm, was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949), which brought him world notice. The allegorical satire Animal Farm was probably written in the early 1940's, and 1984 was probably written in the late 1940's.

Even the U.S. came close and is still on the deadly path to a 1984 animal farm. The journalist Rex Curry pointed out that few people know that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a National Socialist in the U.S. (Francis Bellamy) and originally had a straight-arm salute and that it was the origin of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party).

The pledge of allegiance is an example of right-think. It is a rewrite of the history of this country (as rewriting history was Winston Smith's job) and to make us forget.

George Orwell was, like many intellectuals of his day, a socialist. However, after an international purge by Stalin in which many Trotskyites were assassinated, and which Orwell himself only narrowly escaped, he began to doubt and critically think about the then ongoing experiments in socialism. The product of that revelation was the novel "Animal Farm" and "1984."

The Red cause in Spain seduced the literary elite worldwide. Dos Passos, Auden, Hellman, Malraux, Orwell, Spender. ''Everybody was there but Shakespeare" according to another literary volunteer for the so-called people's cause. The Spanish Civil war lasted from 1936 till 1939.

The honest ones wised up and turned against it, Dos Passos and Spender particularly. More importantly, unlike people then and now, Orwell had the guts to fight in a war he backed philosophically. Orwell actually enlisted in the Republican forces and was shot in the neck and nearly killed in the Spanish Civil War while fighting against Franco's regime. Orwell barely escaped into France after learning that the Stalinists and Communists he was fighting with had him marked for a bullet like many of his like-minded fellow travelers. His non-fiction account "Homage to Catalonia" should be read by any war advocates.

Orwell got back to England intent on exposing the Communists and paid dearly. He could not get published and Animal Farm and 1984 were rejected repeatedly. Imagine if they had not made it into print.

Read Orwell, and do not read Democrat-socialists and Republican-socialists. Orwell warns of current dangers: of our Police State, of the Thought-Police (e.g., political correctness), governmental brain-washing, and threats to individual liberties (1984), of the unavoidable corruption of government ("Animal Farm").

Woody Allen's anti-utopian comedy "Sleeper" (1973) is one of his funniest and it's a takeoff on "1984" in which a Big Brother-like dictator destroys freedom while Woody and Diane Keaton organize a revolution.

There have also been film versions of "Animal Farm" including a 1955 version, and a 1999 version with the voices of Kelsey Grammer, Julia Ormond and Patrick Stewart.

Remember the concluding sentence of Orwell's Animal Farm: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which."

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Summary: Two variations on corruption
Review: Orwell was a socialist and genuinely believed in the ideals represented by Lenin's revolution in Russia. So when Stalin came to power and the dream of communism crumbled to a very different reality Orwell was very disturbed. The novels Animal Farm and 1984 were both written in response to the failure of socialism in Russia.

1984 - The novel is always dark. No happy beginning, no happy middle and no happy ending. It follows the story of Winston Smith. He lives in a society in which the government can at any time monitor anyone. Hidden microphones and cameras are omnipresent. He doesn't love the government, which is the only crime recognized - a thought crime. It is important to read this book before throwing around terms like "Orwellian" and "Big Brother" It has been so influential on society that it introduced these terms which are now used by people who haven't read the book.

Animal Farm - A less shocking variation on the theme of corruption, told in the form of a children's story. It tells the story of animals who overthrow the oppressive farmer and found a government based on the principle of equality: "All animals are equal." The pigs are more intelligent and so have the leadership roles in the new Animal Farm. There is a pig counterpart for Trotsky and Lenin and Stalin and every other leader of Russia from the revolution until the 40's. The plot to Animal Farm parallels the history of Russia. Things go from idealistic to very bad, and eventually "All animals are created equal, some are more equal than others."