Title: Animal Farm
Author: George Orwell
Genre: Classics, Fantasy, Politics
First published: August 17th 1945
Finished reading: January 27th 2014
Pages: 112
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Ok, so this book was completely NOT what I expected. In a good way. When I got my hands on this one, I only knew it was a classic and supposedly a must read. Wanting to take a break from the book I’m currently reading, I decided to squeeze in this short novel into my schedule. To be honest, the first pages had a huge WTF factor, and made me wonder if I grabbed the book the movie Babe The Pig was based on. (And later found out that that movie actually was based on a different book by Dick King-Smith…) I soon found out this book has a completely different meaning. George Orwell meant it as a satire, questioning the philosophy of Stalin in the Soviet Union. Animal Farm was published in 1945, the year where the Second World War ended and just before the time the Cold War made its introduction. The world represented in Animal Farm actually is a representation of the society in Soviet Union round that time.
Orwell describes a group of farm animals tired of having to serve men, and they decided to start a revolution. Once they scare the men away, they start their own new society. All things seem to go better then before the revolution, until Snowball (who represents Trotsky) is chased away. Napoleon (the infamous Stalin) starts to create his own world and piece by piece converts the new world in one similar to the human world again… By introducing communism to the Animal Farm.
Animal Farm is a great satire and it would definitely be interesting to read this one again after refreshing the facts of the Russian history of the 20th century. It’s short, quite easy to read, and without doubt recommendable.
This is in my Top 10. SD
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