George Orwell, Collins Collins GCSE, Lucy Toop: Animal Farm (2021, HarperCollins Publishers Limited)
English language
Published April 20, 2021 by HarperCollins Publishers Limited.
Animal Farm is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting story of revolutions and idealism, power and corruption. 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.' Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges..
I don't really remember it... kind of like high school.
Can't believe Orwell looked at the rise of the Soviet Union, the bloody collapse of a workers revolution into a personality cult that was completely detached from its original intensions, and thought "a great way to summarise this would be with farm animals".
And was correct.
‘Animal Farm’ is truly an interesting story; we all know what the story represents but George Orwell portrayed communists Russia in World War II really well. The book was short and I was able to read it in one day, almost in one sitting. I think we could spend a long time discussing which animal represents which Russian and working out which battle was The Battle of the Cowshed or The Battle of the Windmill. I did especially enjoy the flag (The Horn and Hoof Flag reminiscent of the hammer and sickle), Squealer (propaganda pig) and Moses the Raven (the Russian Orthodox Church). It is definitely one of those books you need to read at least once in your lifetime. I think I enjoyed it more than ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’.
I read this a long time ago, and I remember it only vaguely, except that I clearly recall being unimpressed by it. It all seemed too obvious. Compared to 1984, it is not worth reading. At least that's what I thought at the time.
