An quaint view on history, George Orwell’s Animal Farm was a book made to influence. Under the guise of a novella, this book’s main purpose is to bring to light a viewpoint that is a bit darker than common themes of a “happy ending” founded on the the grounds of teamwork and friendship. Rather, Orwell presents his book simply. The concept is simple enough to grasp: animals on a farm. The tyranny is easy to see: Mr. Jones and later the pigs brutally governing the masses. And the challenges are clearly seen: a picturesque ideal, but a skewed reality. It is through these more “tame” examples as compared to their more realistic equivalents (ex. Operation Barbarossa v. the Battle of the Windmill) that he reaches as many people as he can. The diction
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The subject, the Soviet Union, had just endured revolutions and two world wars that had left them devastated within the span of fifty years. At the time of this book's publishing, Stalin, the Napoleon of the real world, was sitting among his fellow leaders drinking to the successes of the war, with good reason. He had just defeated the greatest invasion in history, albeit at an incredibly high casualty and infrastructural cost, reflected in the book by Orwell’s telling of the aftermath of the battle of the windmill: They had won, but they were weary and bleeding. Slowly they began to limp back towards the farm. “The sight of their dead comrades stretched upon the grass moved some of them to tears. And for a little while they halted in sorrowful silence at the place where the windmill had once stood (168).” This great victory over the Nazi menace was also the reason for the societal taboo at the time of criticizing the winner and champion of the Great Patriotic …show more content…
Napoleon sits in the Manor house, drinking with his fellow leaders. In fact, Orwell specifically singles-out Mr. Pilkington, the Anglo farmer in this last scene. “This bon mot set the table in a roar; and Mr. Pilkington once again congratulated the pigs on the low rations, the long working hours, and the general absence of pampering which he had observed on Animal Farm (219).” Here, Orwell decries this glorifying of Soviet leadership, along with sharing his distaste for the influence of capitalism as well. Noting that his political position as a social democrat, it would stand to reason that he would show these two, now dominant, economic models that dominated the major powers as negative while holding to the ideals of Old Major and Snowball. He makes it clear that it is only under that system that there will be no “farmer” and no one would go hungry as it had happened with the two systems that had become so similar. Notably the movie does not make such a fuss of this point, instead showing a new revolution led by Benjamin meant to inspire dissent within the Communist bloc to throw off their now oppressive
The subject, the Soviet Union, had just endured revolutions and two world wars that had left them devastated within the span of fifty years. At the time of this book's publishing, Stalin, the Napoleon of the real world, was sitting among his fellow leaders drinking to the successes of the war, with good reason. He had just defeated the greatest invasion in history, albeit at an incredibly high casualty and infrastructural cost, reflected in the book by Orwell’s telling of the aftermath of the battle of the windmill: They had won, but they were weary and bleeding. Slowly they began to limp back towards the farm. “The sight of their dead comrades stretched upon the grass moved some of them to tears. And for a little while they halted in sorrowful silence at the place where the windmill had once stood (168).” This great victory over the Nazi menace was also the reason for the societal taboo at the time of criticizing the winner and champion of the Great Patriotic …show more content…
Napoleon sits in the Manor house, drinking with his fellow leaders. In fact, Orwell specifically singles-out Mr. Pilkington, the Anglo farmer in this last scene. “This bon mot set the table in a roar; and Mr. Pilkington once again congratulated the pigs on the low rations, the long working hours, and the general absence of pampering which he had observed on Animal Farm (219).” Here, Orwell decries this glorifying of Soviet leadership, along with sharing his distaste for the influence of capitalism as well. Noting that his political position as a social democrat, it would stand to reason that he would show these two, now dominant, economic models that dominated the major powers as negative while holding to the ideals of Old Major and Snowball. He makes it clear that it is only under that system that there will be no “farmer” and no one would go hungry as it had happened with the two systems that had become so similar. Notably the movie does not make such a fuss of this point, instead showing a new revolution led by Benjamin meant to inspire dissent within the Communist bloc to throw off their now oppressive