George Orwell's Animal Farm
George Orwell was chiefly interested in justice and equality. He was a deeply pessimistic man who had powers of imagination which few of his contemporaries dreamed one man could have. Orwell's character and writing style was so deep that qualities that were and still are manifest in his work, did not reveal themselves in his life (Scott-Kilvert 273). In his short life, Orwell distinguished himself as a novelist, journalist, essayist, literary critic, and political polemicist. In his writings, Orwell used a personalized blend of moral commitment and social commentary to distinguish himself as a major spokesman for his generation (Beacham 1084). Animal Farm was one of the first real attempts to use a beast fable to satirize communism. The novel is quoted to be a struggle about farm animals that have driven out their human exploiter, to create a free and equal community. In doing this, Animal Farm takes the form of a mast ingeniously worked-out recapitulation of the history of Soviet Russia from 1917 up to the Teheran Conference. George Orwell uses the events of the Russian in his political satire Animal Farm to express the main theme, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
For example, the fourth commandment written by the animals in Animal Farm stated that "no animal shall sleep in a bed. Animal Farm shows Orwell's ability to maintain a delicate, satiric balance that keeps his readers conscious simultaneously of the human traits satirized and of the animals as animals (Williams 107). Orwell is clearly a direct descendant of English satirists of the eighteenth century. Animal Farm was written in a pure, subtle, and simplistic form of narrative that evokes descriptive imagery and stunning clarity of purpose. This is true throughout Animal Farm as he directly shows how corrupt man and society really is. Orwell developed his own "Orwellian dialect or language which presents experience and then argues from it (Bloom 2129). As a satirist, George Orwell, had to take a mass of empirical data and consciously or unconsciously select those details. Although Animal Farm is much different for Orwell's previous realistic manner, seeds for this tale are present in earlier works. Both masterpieces beautifully satirize the corruptness of governments and both have situations where fingers are being pointed at the limitations of human kindness and decency (Beacham 1084-1085). In the end the pigs are indistinguishable from humans and the ideals of the revolution seem distant or forgotten in the face of terror, manipulation and despair (Beacham 1083). But the pigs were so clever that they could think of a way round every difficulty (Orwell 35). This aspect is shown directly in this exert from Animal Farm: How they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their efforts were rewarded, for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had hoped. Because of his travels to Spain, Orwell developed disillusionment with the Communist party and convinced himself of the impending treat of totalitarianism on the survival of intellectual freedom (Beacham 1082). A political satire such as Animal Farm is not a transparent medium through which the reader is given a view of reality; it is a very peculiar lens which renders distorted and often grotesque images of society (Williams 103-104).
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