Book Review: Animal Farm
‘All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’
Okay, again with more George Orwell, but I must say I’m rather addicted to his writing. Damn it! But it's okay, because this time, instead of reading about dystopian futures or the life and times of tramps in Paris and London, we have satire! And who doesn’t love a bit of political satire?
Animal Farm was a commentary on the dealings of Soviet Russia; still in the grips of power when Orwell wrote this book. Stalin was still a thing and it was starting to get … interesting in Russia, shall we say. It starts off innocently enough, a pig called Major announcing to the farm animals a dream that he had, in which the animals rose up again farmer Jones and his wife and would rule and run the farm by themselves, they would have plenty of food to each and they wouldn’t be enslaved by man anymore! And let it be called ‘Animalism’ Okay, cool, fine- nice in idea- in principal, but as to whether the animals could pull off such a revolution? And would such a society be possible? When revolution did happen, the animals write down seven commandments to live by, written on the side of the barn: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. No animal shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall drink alcohol. No animal shall kill any other animal. All animals are equal. Suffice to say, these commandments do not last long. The pigs become the natural leaders of the farm, seeing as they are the most intelligent. The rest of animals take it upon themselves to try and educate themselves, the horses have some luck, the sheep, not so much. They only ever seem to learn ‘four legs good, two legs bad’ and that’ll do for their indoctrination. They choose to rename their home as ‘Animal Farm’, which fits more in line with their notions of Animalism. At first all is well, but as with Soviet Russia, this peaceful idealism doesn’t last for long.
Napoleon and Snowball become the highest preachers of ‘animalism’ Yet they always disagree. It’s seems they are disagreeing for disagreements sake. And power. These disagreements come to ahead over the construction of a windmill, Napoleon thinks its a terrible idea, Snowball thinks its great. Napoleon, in an act of brute force chases Snowball out of Animal Farm. He does so, by taking puppies from when they were born and raising them to be his own personal guard. The dogs are savage and Snowball only just escapes. Snowball is then used as the scapegoat for all the bad things that happen on Animal Farm, such as the when the windmill falls down for the first time. It is then up to the resident propagandist ‘Squealer’ to rile the animals up with false information and appeal to their better nature, he’s very convincing. But it made me furious. The deception. The lies. The crocodile tears. The ‘oh Comrades!’. The abuse of power.
With Snowball out of the way, it leaves Napoleon to abuse power, absolutely. The commandments on the wall slowly change over time. The pigs start living in there farm house, start sleeping in beds, start drinking alcohol. The animals are alarmed by this, but are calmed by Squealer when he says ‘in beds with sheets’. It helps that most of the animals can’t read or are purposefully kept in their own ignorance by Napoleon. The cows were promised that their milk would be used for their own calves, but the milk is stolen by the pigs for themselves. The worst comes to worst at the purge. The act of ‘no animal shall kill another animal’ is utterly destroyed. Animals come forward sighting that they have betrayed ‘Animalism’ but having bad thoughts, or have conspired with snowball to overthrow ‘Animalism’. And thus are dully killed much to the shock of all the animals so much so that they are afraid to even speak their own thoughts.
Napoleon hires a human, Mr Whymper, to deal with the other farms and the outside world for things that the farm cannot make for themselves. The animals distrusts humans and for good reason, they were attacked by the neighbouring farms twice, both times they won, but the second time was at great loss. Not only did they loose the windmill (again) but they lost a great number of the animals too. Not that the pigs seemed to care.
As the animals work harder and their rations grow shorts, the pigs grow fatter and fatter. The pigs are in dire need of money. They’ve acquired a taste for alcohol and other such luxuries, but that costs money. In the end, they sell one of the animals called ‘Boxer’, the one who was the strongest and hard working ‘I will work harder’ to a Knacker, much to the dismay of those left who could read.
It is inevitable that it came to a sad end, the animals could no loner distinguish between the pigs and the humans, seeing as the pigs began acting like humans right at the very end. The ensuing fight between the pigs and the humans brought the ideology of ‘animalism’ crashing down around them as the new doctrine finally sinks in ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’.