Animal Farm

(pub.1945)

Webmaster's Note, 5/10/2007 - We have been informed by the rights holder that this work is still copyrighted in our territory. So we have removed it. You may still read our original summary though to the left.

This is an allegorical dystopian novel by George Orwell, published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"), and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), he wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he had tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".

Time magazine chose this book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005); it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996, and is also included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.

Plot summary: Old Major, the old boar on the Manor Farm, summons the animals on the farm together for a meeting, during which he refers to humans as parasites and teaches the animals a revolutionary song called Beasts of England. When Major dies, two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and consider it a duty to prepare for the Rebellion. The animals revolt and drive the drunken and irresponsible farmer Mr. Jones from the farm, renaming it "Animal Farm". They adopt Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, "All animals are equal."

Snowball teaches the animals to read and write, while Napoleon educates young puppies on the principles of Animalism. Food is plentiful, and the farm runs smoothly. The pigs elevate themselves to positions of leadership and set aside special food items, ostensibly for their personal health. Napoleon and Snowball struggle for preeminence. When Snowball announces his plans to build a windmill, Napoleon has his dogs chase Snowball away and subsequently declares himself leader of Animal Farm.

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. When the animals take over the farm, they think it is the start of a better life. Their dreams is of a world where all animals are equal and all property is shared. But soon the pigs take control and one of them, Napoleon, becomes the leader of all the animals. One by one the principles of the revolution are abandoned, until the animals have even less freedom than before.--Submitted by Anonymous.

Animal Farm is a classic work by George Orwell and a noted piece of literature, which, of course, may help the reader to catapult the imagination beyond the horizons of dogmatic adherence to idealistic or Utopian thoughts. It however, represents human characteristics in an analogy of animal instincts, but it really gives insight into the Russian Revolution of 1917. It also mimics the doomsday of a precipitated change, brought by a modicum of bureaucratic class called as Bolsheviks.--Submitted by Rahimullah Baig Hunzai

In this book, written in 1943 and 1944 while Orwell was working as a journalist and commentator for (among others) the BBC Orwell vents his profound disdain for Stalinism and his disappointment with Marxism as political praxis. A particularly English brand of Socialist with a towering social conscience Orwell himself not only campaigned on behalf of the ILP but had the courage of his convictions to join the Poum in the fight against fascism in Spain in 1937. However, disappointed and endangered by the political machinations of Stalin's Russia in Spain and disgusted by the Molotov Ribbentrop non aggression pact of 1939 and early communist rhetoric against involvement in World War II as a capitalist war, Orwell turns his not inconsiderable facility for satire against totalitarian socialism. Not so much against the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 but against the hypocrisy, the repressiveness that that revolution descended into from the threat of Lenin. This is one of the best books in the English Language written by one of the most viscerally intelligent and humane geniuses of the pen to have lived. It comes highly recommended.--Submitted by Anonymous

ALL humans ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME humans ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. This is what happens in many country nowadays.--Submitted by Anonymous