Animal Farm by George Orwell

[Janet]

Animal Farm by George Orwell

 

 

Animal Farm by George Orwell (This is a different version to the one I have)

 

The ‘Blurb’

Having got rid of their human master, the animals in this political fable look forward to a life of freedom and plenty. But as a clever, ruthless elite takes control, the other animals find themselves hopelessly ensnared in the same old way.

 

Animal Farm is perhaps the most famous allegory about the Russian Revolution. Orwell based the book on events up to and during Joseph Stalin's regime.

 

I first read this book back in 1982, as part of my CSE English exam. I didn’t remember that much about it (although I clearly remembered the fact that commandment number 7 changed from the unbiased "All animals are equal" to ”All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” ) until I started rereading it, when it all came flooding back.

 

What I didn’t realise at age 16, was that although the book is very short, it is also very clever.

 

I don’t often reread books, but I did enjoy revisiting this one!

 

The paperback is 144 pages long and is published by Penguin. The ISBN number is 978-0141182704 (This information relates to a different book from the one pictured, which is an old version I have).

 

7½/10

 

(Read June 2007)

[Liz]

I've read Animal Farm a few times, now. The most recent being for English Lit GCSE.

I must say that I do love the book. I agree with you that it is such a clever story, and I think it's great the way Orwell gives each animal an important role within the book. This will be a book which I will be coming back to again and again.

[Louiseog]

This book is so clever, have shown the film which I think is equally as excellent today to my Year 10s as it is the only way I can explain communism and how it doesn't work!

[Freewheeling Andy]

This book is so clever, have shown the film which I think is equally as excellent today to my Year 10s as it is the only way I can explain communism and how it doesn't work!

 

Ooooh! I'm tempted to get into a long debate about how the failings of Stalinised Leninism don't implicitly argue that communism is innately doomed.

 

But I'd better not.

 

Anyway, I love the way the parable is told in terms of almost a childrens story, yet the substance is a fundamental critique of the failings of the Soviet Union. It is a brilliant book.

[Louiseog]

Ooooh! I'm tempted to get into a long debate about how the failings of Stalinised Leninism don't implicitly argue that communism is innately doomed.

 

But I'd better not.

 

Anyway, I love the way the parable is told in terms of almost a childrens story, yet the substance is a fundamental critique of the failings of the Soviet Union. It is a brilliant book.

Ooh I think you should because as I pressed OK I thought that that was what I should have said (although I would have said something like the communism based in the Soviet Union!! )

 

As you said it is about the Soviet Union and its failings and as such is great!

[Freewheeling Andy]

Well, clearly Animal Farm points at the innate failings of Napoleon's vision, and Snowball's vision - or, hypothetically, other pig's visions, although we can view Snowball as an implicit position that no other pig's visions are testes - is not subjected to any analysis, and therefore isn't considered to have failed.

 

It's interesting that Snowball/Trotsky is considered a hero by Orwell, mind. A position that I always felt was slightly odd, considering that in his essays he's hardly complimentary about any of the extreme left.