Animal Farm

[Eore]

anybody else read this? we had to read the first 46 pages for english class, and i stayed up all night and read the whole book :-. is it just me or is eric arthur blair/george orwell a genius?

[Q.Q.Quillume]

Mr. Orwell, who also wrote 1984 , passed away in 1950.

[Golf Yokel]

anybody else read this? we had to read the first 46 pages for english class, and i stayed up all night and read the whole book

So I take it that you are learning about the connection Orwell made with the book and his views on Soviet society and Stalinism, right?

My high school forced us to read the book also, gave us a test on the actual book itself, and never even went into any of the underlying messages and views of the book. Needless to say I had more fun my second time reading it (in college) when we got to discuss th ebook the way it was meant to be portrayed instead of a book about a pig named Napoleon .

[TCCcaddie]

Yah Orwell was a genius. I just finished Animal Farm a week ago now i am half way through 1984 and his grim outlook on the future in that book is frightening.

Ill explain most of the symbolism if you dont mind when i have it all in my mind before i am totally consumed with 1984. In Animal Farm Orwell used a sort of children's fable setting as a way to show the Communist Revolution in Russia. In the beginning of the book with Old Major explaining his ideas alludes to Karl Marx and his Communist Manifesto. Jones with his opression and eventual overthrow is representative of Tsar Nicholas II. Napoleon is used as a symbol for the Communist Party that takes over Russia but mosty a reference to Joseph Stalin. Orwell hated Communist Russia and especially the regin of Stalin that is why the chacter that he is portrayed as is the antagonist in most of Orwell's stories. Snowball represents Leon Trotsky who was for the revolution in Russia but did not support the policies and ideas of Stalin so he was expelled from the Communist policy just as Snowball was expelled from Animal Farm. At the end of the novel Orwell uses the fact that the animals were not able to recognize the pigs from the humans as a metaphor that the REvolution in Russia turned out to become the very thing that they were rebelling against.

[Eore]

So I take it that you are learning about the connection Orwell made with the book and his views on Soviet society and Stalinism, right?.

yeah. the school let me take literature analysis this year, so this was explained to us....also, in my social studies class, we are learning about people like locke, and the topics are similar.

[907golfer12]

I read both of those books last year, in 8th grade, and to tell you the truth I didn't like either book at all, guess it just wasn't for me.

[Golf Yokel]

I read both of those books last year, in 8th grade, and to tell you the truth I didn't like either book at all, guess it just wasn't for me.

I was reading Nietchze and David Hume when I was 9...

*shrug* To each their own.

[SaltyDog]

1984 is one of the best books I've ever read -

[ganjagolfer]

while animal farm's social and political criticism is directed towards the stalinist era, its critique is universally applied to all fear and control based systems such as what is going on here in america

tap beer, not wire

peace through torture???

happy to see public schools are passing this classic onto a new generation, hopefully a generation that will put to sleep all the madness

[shortgame85]

My suggestion: keep reading. Do it often and be diverse in your material. And yes, Virginia, Mr. Orwell was very bright.