Scholastic Penguin Modern Classics: Animal Farm

Author: M. Dowden

Rating: 5

Review: Although not the first book by Eric Blair, better known to us all as George Orwell, this novella when published was to really bring him to the attention of the reading public, and with his next novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was to cement his reputation for all time. This novella was rejected by some publishers, and even when accepted the publication was delayed. This was because we were in the midst of the Second World War, and it was seen as controversial and perhaps damaging as we were at the time allies with Soviet Russia. But when publication took place this was most certainly a hit and has since been recognised as the classic it most definitely is. Originally entitled as Animal Farm A Fairy Story nowadays it is just published as Animal Farm, and being an allegory is also a political satire. Here Orwell was writing about the run up to the Russian Revolution, and then the new regime becoming totalitarian with Stalin taking the helm with his cult of personality. And so as this starts we see Major, a pig nearing his natural end telling the other animals on Manor Farm of his dream, where animals rule the country and man done away with, a state called animalism. As such what he proposes seems a utopia to the animals and this leads to a revolution at the farm. What happens next though is hardly what was expected. With Snowball and his visions for the new future that he sees so there is also Napoleon in the spotlight, but which of these two pigs will become the dominant force? Orwell wanted to keep this relatively simple and easy for all to read, so that those of lower reading levels could understand what is going on, and he does achieve this, and so if younger people read this, especially nowadays they will not immediately get the parallels with the history of communism in Russia they will pick up on other themes. Receiving mixed reviews in the media on publication so the public read and loved it, and it is still as relevant in many ways to today’s world. This is about a totalitarian regime, a dictatorship and how people can be manipulated and exploited by a privileged ruling class that are not that great in number. With for instance the original seven rules of the animalism on the farm, so we see these become altered and the other animals persuaded that this has always been what has been written. We too often see politicians try to seize the narrative for their own ends, such as with the virus, and how certain things that are told to us soon become dropped or altered over time. Indeed, you only have to look to Brexit where we were supposed to have a greater range and cheaper food, and regardless of the pandemic, food prices were already rising, and since then although a first world country we routinely have empty shelves in the supermarkets. Always worth reading, as this book shows and indeed so does Nineteen Eighty-Four, we are still living with the same sorts of problems, and you do not have to live in a totalitarian state for dreams to become destroyed and nightmares presented instead. This Penguin Classics edition also includes two appendices, what would have been the preface, which is an essay for the English edition, and one for the Ukrainian edition.

Author: FictionFan

Rating: 3

Review: Inspired by a dream had by Old Major, the white boar, the animals of Manor Farm rebel against their human master and throw him off the land. They agree to work the farm for their own mutual benefit, sharing the work and the produce fairly, each according to his ability and need. Being the most intelligent animals, the pigs take over the planning, both of how to maximise the farm's yield and of how to protect themselves from outside hostility. But, as we all know, power corrupts... Of course, this fable is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. First published in 1945, Orwell apparently wrote it as a warning to the nations of the Allies, who had been united with the USSR in fighting Nazi Germany and who therefore had been motivated to overlook some of the horrors going on under Stalin. He also felt there were many in the West who were happy to fool themselves that the USSR was a successful experiment in socialism, so he wanted to draw attention to the fact that the regime had become totalitarian, with a hierarchical power structure that Orwell saw as not altogether dissimilar to the power structures in the capitalist Western democracies, with an entrenched ruling class putting its own interests first. (All of this is paraphrased from Orwell's own introduction to the Ukranian edition of the book, which is reproduced as an appendix in my Penguin Modern Classics edition.) I first read this as a school text, when I was about twelve, I think. I remembered it as having rather blown me away at the time, but truthfully because of the Boxer storyline rather than the politics. Now, another 40 years on, older, possibly more knowledgeable and certainly more critical, I found I had some issues with Orwell's portrayal. The reason Orwell gives for the pigs becoming the leaders is their intelligence. The other animals are fundamentally stupid. Is that, then, Orwell's view of the leadership and people of the USSR? Are the leaders all brainy while the proles are basically thick? It's not simply that the other animals are uneducated – in the first flush of enthusiasm after the rebellion, all are given the opportunity to learn to read, but only the pigs and the donkey succeed. Poor old Boxer the horse, the backbone of the revolution, hardworking and utterly loyal, never manages to get past ABCD in learning the alphabet. I fear it smacks of a kind of utterly misplaced intellectual elitism to me, a suggestion that those who become totalitarian dictators do it through superior intelligence. Later, the pigs resort to intimidation, misinformation and propaganda, but not till after the intelligence/stupidity divide has allowed them to take a stranglehold on power. But there's another aspect to it too, which sat uneasily with me. In this fable, all intelligent animals become corrupt despots, while stupidity seems to equal loyalty and a sense of fairplay and sacrifice. My second problem is with the idea that the pigs become more humanlike as they become more corrupt. Assuming Farmer Jones represents Czarist Russia, then OK - I can go along with that for the sake of the fable. But if you factor in the other humans on neighbouring farms, with whom the pigs sometimes form alliances and at other times fight, then presumably these other farms represent the countries neighbouring the USSR. So, if the humans in the allegory represent corrupt leadership, the message seems to be that all leaders of all forms of government are corrupt and abuse their proletariat just as much as the USSR does. Even if for the sake of argument one accepts this as true (which I struggle to do even hypothetically), I can't help but feel it means Orwell undoes his own argument about the unique corruption of power in the USSR. If democratic governments are just as bad as totalitarian ones, then... what's the point he's trying to make? Orwell says in his introduction that he didn't mean for the pigs and humans to appear to fully reconcile at the end, and indeed they don't, but they have become so similar that it's hard to say which ones are the more morally or politically acceptable. The book foreshadows the idea of “double-think”, later developed much more effectively and credibly in 1984, as the founding principles of the regime change over time while Squealer, the regime's spokespig, blatantly denies the truth of the past, and disseminates the new “truth” through regime propaganda. In summary, I really preferred the book when I was twelve, when the simplified allegory and emotional appeal of Boxer's story worked better for me. My adult self found it a bit too simplistic and reliant on the reader not making any serious critical analysis of the messages, when it all begins to lack coherence. An interesting and cautionary re-read though, especially in this troubled time of “fake news” and “alternative facts”.