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A review by sidharthvardhan
Animal Farm by George Orwell
5.0
Anyone who ever read history can observe how nations involved in great revolutions which bring great changes, slowly reverts to the old ways. A new world can not be created out of old people - at least not in as short time as revolution tries to do. Revolution is an act of desperation by masses which is exception, efforts to make it a rule will always fail.
To quote one example, Napoleon took over dictatorship after revolution had established democracy in France.
Animal farm brings this theme out perfectly, though it uses Russian context but even if you don't know about Russian revolution you will still enjoy it.
Russian revolution which aimed at establishing socialism had ended up just replacing Czars with new rulers who slowly started looking like the old aristocrats. Animal Farm is an allegory of Russian revolution and its history under its two dictators. There are too many metaphors to talk about.
Here is a list :
Men = Czars/Upper class
Political class = Pigs
Armed Forces = Dogs
Old Major = Karl Marx (or Vladimir Lenin)
Snowball = Leon Trotsky
Napoleon = Stalin
There are many more - the hard working horse who is blindly faithful and old Benjamin who was too wise to know what would happen and yet choose to keep silent.
George Orwell is not against socialism, in fact at many other places he has demanded socialistic reforms in England; what he is criticizing is the way Stalin manipulated the idea of socialism to his own interests, just like the way the pigs manipulated the seven commandments.
The advantage which an allegory offers is that it gives reader a new perspective of seeing things and thus one gets to reconsider the assumptions she or he has come to made over time. It is amusing, for example, how commandments were altered more and more to benefit of pigs.
England and Russia were at time of publication allies and so This book is NOT a propaganda book, in fact it was rejected by many publishers, and Ministry of Information of England strongly recommended against its publication. Orwell's preface to Animal Farm, also called 'The freedom of press' is an eye opener - do read it if you already haven't.
To quote one example, Napoleon took over dictatorship after revolution had established democracy in France.
Animal farm brings this theme out perfectly, though it uses Russian context but even if you don't know about Russian revolution you will still enjoy it.
Russian revolution which aimed at establishing socialism had ended up just replacing Czars with new rulers who slowly started looking like the old aristocrats. Animal Farm is an allegory of Russian revolution and its history under its two dictators. There are too many metaphors to talk about.
Here is a list :
Men = Czars/Upper class
Political class = Pigs
Armed Forces = Dogs
Old Major = Karl Marx (or Vladimir Lenin)
Snowball = Leon Trotsky
Napoleon = Stalin
There are many more - the hard working horse who is blindly faithful and old Benjamin who was too wise to know what would happen and yet choose to keep silent.
George Orwell is not against socialism, in fact at many other places he has demanded socialistic reforms in England; what he is criticizing is the way Stalin manipulated the idea of socialism to his own interests, just like the way the pigs manipulated the seven commandments.
The advantage which an allegory offers is that it gives reader a new perspective of seeing things and thus one gets to reconsider the assumptions she or he has come to made over time. It is amusing, for example, how commandments were altered more and more to benefit of pigs.
England and Russia were at time of publication allies and so This book is NOT a propaganda book, in fact it was rejected by many publishers, and Ministry of Information of England strongly recommended against its publication. Orwell's preface to Animal Farm, also called 'The freedom of press' is an eye opener - do read it if you already haven't.