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Ideas play a part in any revolution, but the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917--the one that changed \"Russia\" into the \"U.S.S.R.\"--was noteworthy for being principally inspired by one idea. It was a revolution consciously made in the name of one class (the working class, the \"proletariat\") and against another class (the owners, the \"bourgeoisie\"). The Revolution was made by men who believed with Karl Marx that the whole history of th ... mehr
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One night when Farmer Jones has gone to bed drunk, all the animals of Manor Farm assemble in the barn for a meeting. Old Major, the prize pig, wants to tell them about a strange dream he had. First, he tells them in clear, powerful language \"the nature of life\" as he has come to understand it. Animals toil, suffer, get barely enough to eat; as soon as they are no longer useful, they are slaughtered. And why? Because animals are enslaved by Ma ... mehr
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From then on, the pigs all carry whips; they buy a radio, dress in Jones\' clothes. Soon they receive a visit from neighboring farmers. Loud voices and song are heard coming from the farmhouse that night. Despite their fear, the animals are curious; they creep up to the windows to watch. Men and pigs are sitting around the table, drinking and speech-making. When a farmer toasts the success of Animal Farm--its discipline and enforced work leav ... mehr
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ANIMAL FARM: THE PIGS
They lead the Rebellion from the start and progressively take on the same power and characteristics as the human masters they helped overthrow. They represent corrupted human leaders, in particular, the Bolsheviks, who led the overthrow of the capitalist Russian government, only to become new masters in their turn.
^^^^^^^^^^ANIMAL FARM: OLD MAJOR
Old Major is the wise old pig whose stirring speech to the animals he ... mehr
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Orwell uses point of view in Animal Farm to create irony. Irony is a contrast or contradiction, such as between what a statement seems to say and what it really means--or between what characters expect to happen and what really happens. The story is told from the naive point of view of the lower animals, not from that of the clever pigs or an all-seeing narrator. Thus, when there\'s a crash one night and Squealer is found in the barn sprawled o ... mehr
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Animal Farm successfully combines the characteristics of three literary forms--the fable, the satire, and the allegory.
Animal Farm is a fable--a story usually having a moral, in which beasts talk and act like men and women. Orwell\'s animal characters are both animal and human. The pigs, for example, eat mash--real pig food--but with milk in it that they have grabbed and persuaded the other animals to let them keep (a human action). The dog ... mehr
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Because Animal Farm is a story about a revolution betrayed, and Orwell wants us to feel how terrible this betrayal is, he knows it\'s important for us to begin by feeling the force of the hopes and ideals the Revolution started out with. This is what he tries to convey in the two opening chapters. He also suggests, subtly at first, and then more sharply, what kinds of things will lead to the betrayal of the revolutionary ideal. But the opening ... mehr
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The Rebellion happens. It is preceded by the animals\' preparation for it and the human master\'s mismanagement and neglect; then there is a spontaneous revolt. Next we see the animals\' joy in the victorious revolution--the farm is theirs!--and the first steps at making a new society based on animal solidarity and equality. This principle is subtly undermined throughout, however, by the increasingly dominant role played by the pigs, especially ... mehr
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The first paragraph sets the tone and suggests the topic of this chapter:
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.
In the early days of the Revolution, there is hard going for everyone, but the system actually works better than before, because of the animal\'s feelings of pride and solidarity. The result of this hard work--now that the a ... mehr
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After the revolutionary enthusiasm--and the increasing irony--of Chapter III, and before the grim ironies in store for us in Chapter V, the narrative in this chapter is fast and light. With the help of his men and two neighbors, Jones tries to take the farm back by force. But Snowball, who has been reading up on Caesar\'s campaigns, has prepared the animals to defend themselves. They defeat their former master, but not before a sheep is kille ... mehr
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This chapter begins lightly enough. Clover has seen the frivolous, lazy Mollie talking to a human being and \"allowing him to stroke your nose.\" Mollie\'s reaction to the accusation is pure comedy:
\"He didn\'t! I wasn\'t! It isn\'t true!\" cried Mollie, beginning to prance about and paw the ground.
Except for the horselike gestures, she behaves like an accused child. Soon after, she deserts the Farm for a human master who gives her suga ... mehr
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Like Chapter III, this chapter begins with hard but happy work. Here, however, the work is mostly for the windmill rather than for food. Something else is new, too: the pigs introduce a new policy of trade with their human neighbors, In fact, the pigs already seem to be becoming more like the old human masters themselves: they move into the farmhouse and sleep in beds. The animals take another look at the Seven Commandments and make a \"discove ... mehr
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Things go from bad to worse in this chapter. It starts with hard times (hard work, cold winter, scarce food) and hard measures taken to deal with them (ruthless suppression of the revolt of the hens). When spring comes, there is growing hysteria about Snowball, whose invisible actions, like a witch\'s spells, are said to be responsible for all the farm\'s problems. In fact Squealer \"demonstrates\" that Snowball had been a traitor from the star ... mehr
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Like the Battle of the Cowshed in Chapter IV, this is a light chapter wedged in between two heavy ones. If the Battle of the windmill is much darker and more painful than the earlier battle, the fighting is still treated as a mock-epic. And the chapter ends with a couple of poker-faced jokes at the pigs\' expense (although they\'re at the animals\' expense, in a way).
There is a kind of prologue to this chapter--really an epilogue to the las ... mehr
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Most readers have found this the most moving and memorable chapter in the book. By inventing the episode of Boxer\'s death--which, unlike other episodes in this allegory, does not stand for any specific event in history--Orwell has found a way to dramatize everything that\'s wrong with the new society. Here we can feel the full impact of the pigs\' callous betrayal of the working animals, their betrayal of the revolutionary ideal.
Fittingly, ... mehr
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Just about everything that has been implied in Animal Farm so far is made explicit in this last chapter.
Like Chapter IX, it begins with a general portrait of the \"new\" society. The same themes are there, sad or ironic, made all the more poignant by the passage of time. Memory of the old days is fading; history as we know it has disappeared. Times are hard, but it is said they were harder still under Jones. Above all, the animals still hav ... mehr
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In Animal Farm, [Orwell] chose for the first time an unrealistic, expressionistic device, the beast fable, as his satiric vehicle. The beast fable--a very ancient satiric technique--is basically the dramatic realization of metaphor; in a realistic work a man might be called a pig, but in the beast fable he is presented as an actual pig. Satirists have always found this translation of metaphor to dramatic fact an extremely effective way of portr ... mehr
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...this grim little parable is by no means about Russia alone. Orwell is concerned to show how revolutionary ideals of justice, equality and fraternity always shatter in the event. The ironic reversals in Animal Farm could be fairly closely related to real events since the work was written--this is not the least of their effectiveness--as well as to the events on which they were based...
-A. E. Dyson, The Crazy Fabric: Essays in Irony, 1965
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What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, \"I am going to produce a work of art.\" I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the ... mehr
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It was on Cristmas-eve at Lima Airport. Suzanne and her mother wanted to get home to Suzanne's dad. Her dad lives in Pucalpa. That's a little town in the South American Jungle. In the plane, Suzanne sat next to a window. After the Take-off she saw the tops of the Andes mountains. After a while she saw the big jungle trees. She hadn't seen the jungle for three months. Suddenly the plane rolled from one side to the other. She looked out of the ... mehr
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