Book Review; Animal Farm by George Orwell

One thing I found out that was utterly fascinating when reading this book; George Orwell was a socialist. A socialist! The man who will be forever remembered as the one who took the blade of satire against the dragon of Stalinism and told the parable that has become the catch-call of anti-statists everywhere, a socialist! Fascinating, but I guess that only goes to show that you can find an honest man anywhere.

I purchased the two Orwell classics, 1984, and Animal Farm as part of a graduation gift from a friend. Having never read either, I felt I was in for a treat. I began reading Animal Farm first, due to its shortness, and read it while on a trip. The book itself is short and very good serving as a parable of the evil that was Joseph Stalin. According to the preface written by Russell Baker, Animal Farm was written out of the time when Orwell had gone to Spain to fight for the democratic government there. He had fallen in with a group of Trotskyists and fought with them (Stalin was, ironically, supporting the democratic government). Most of his friends and comrades were carted off, imprisoned, murdered, or simply vanished, all at the hands of Stalin’s political cronies in the name of the infamous purges, revealing the true nature of Stalin’s “Soviet Experiment.” In response, Orwell wrote the scathing fair-tale of Animal Farm in which we learn that some animals are more equal than others.

The story is a rather simple one. The animals, fed up with being oppressed by the humans (read; The bourgeoisie), and on the spur of the moment, seize a moment of weakness and toss off their human oppressors. The first year is almost utopian. The animals learn to harvest and make food, and do so better than humans, and are fed well and are happy. As time goes on, the pigs, who are the smartest, begin to organize the animals for better work. The two main pigs are Napoleon (Stalin) and Snowball (Trotsky)  constantly bicker and fight. Napoleon is a terrible speaker, but is good at drumming up support in-between democratic meetings. Snowball is an excellent speaker and something of a war hero after driving off an human invasion in an attempt to re-take the farm. The two squabble over everything. Eventually, Snowball proposes a Windmill that will provide the farm with electricity and greatly improve the standard of living. When it becomes apparent that Snowball will have his way, faster than you can say “Cheka” Napoleon summons a hoard of brainwashed beasts of dogs who attack Snowball and drive him from the farm.

Things do not get better.

Napoleon has Squealer, the pig’s master propagandist, begin a campaign to paint Snowball as a traitor and a supporter of humanity. The guard of massive dogs helps drive the point home. Napoleon steal’s Snowball’s windmill plans and begins to build. Napoleon also begin dealing with humans. Things on the farm go downhill. The humans attack, and manage to destroy the Windmill before being driven off. Napoleon also begins to torture and execute everyone who ever opposed him. He trots the animals out to watch as his guard dogs savage anyone and everyone who admits to having sympathized with Snowball. The farm runs red with blood. The animals must work and sacrifice and are left tired and beaten. Boxer, a tireless horse of immense strength, suffers a crippling injury while trying to rebuild the windmill, just before he reaches the age of retirement. Napoleon sells him for glue.

Eventually all the founding principles of Animal farm are corrupted and warped to serve Napoleon’s whims. By the end of the book, the farm is in just as bad a shape as it was under the humans, but all of the animals are too dumb to remember or realize. In the final chilling scene, Napoleon eats a dinner with the humans and proceeds to dismiss all of the ideas of the revolution. An altercation breaks out between the pigs and the human’s, and the animals realize, with some horror, that it is impossible to tell the difference between the two.

The tale of Animal Farm is a fascinating one. We watch as the idealistic revolt is warped by the power hungry pigs and is destroyed from within. We watch as the pigs become the evil they swore to overcome. Its ironic, isn’t it? A thing of note is that Orwell seems to have a great deal of respect, if not hero worship, for Trotsky. Snowball is shown to be brave, committed, intelligent, caring, charismatic, and passionate in juxtaposition to the thick, brutal, and un-personable Napoleon. While it appears that Orwell was not a Trotskyist, he was influence by them and his favoritism to him versus Stalin shows.

While Orwell claimed that Communism is not true Socialism, which he supported, two things too note here is how the pigs became almost as humans, and the exact progression of the quality of life on the farm.

It is truly telling that the pigs, in the end, turned into humans. They became their own symbol of evil. Wether Orwell was conscious of it or not, this illustrates the ultimate hypocrisy of all forms of socialism. They show the evils of people in power, and their only solution is to shift power itself. They do not realize that such a concentration of power is the problem in and of itself! The evils of corrupt and power hungry businessmen are just as applicable to any communist dictator. As illustrated in Animal Farm, the pigs became as humans. So too do the idealistic socialists, when given the chance, become just as bad as the aristocrats and wage-slavers they fought against. The fallacy of socialism is to blame the system for the bad results. They attack capitalism without understand just what capitalism is and how or why it can go wrong. When reading quotes from Marx, his ideas of an entrepreneur come off sounding far more like a feudal baron than Bill Gates. Since they do not understand the bad premises they fight against, so they are forced to make ignorant and overreaching attacks and then fall to the same bad ideas as before. Socialism isn’t new, its a re-hash of the same bad ideas that gave us the wonders of the Dark Ages.

Secondly, there is an interesting pattern in the progression of life on the farm. Life is miserable under the farmer, but, after the oppressive force of the humans is gone, life suddenly improves. The animals, when left to their own devices, learn how to do things better and quicker than the human’s. Life is, well, good. Yet, life starts to go downhill with the more power the pigs gain. There is a direct correlation between the strength of the pigs and of the misery of the animals. Wether Orwell meant it or not, this illustrates another valid point. Given freedom, the animals do better on their own. This in itself seems an argument FOR Objectivist-style capitalism, not against it. Given a small but effective democratic government, devoted to only the protection of the farm, the animals prosper. Yet, when that government overflows into their lives, they are crushed and ground under foot. When left free, to produce, the animals prosper, when controlled, they struggle and squalor and get nowhere. The problem with any type of statism is that it takes the maxim “four legs good, two legs BETTER” to heart, without realizing that instead of making everyone crawl on four legs, it should be trying its hardest to let everyone stand up on two. Its not fair to blame the situation of the U.S.S.R. solely on Stalin (which is not to say that he is any less of a cancer upon the history of human kind) or any other single dictator. They are symptomatic of the bad idea that some animals, or people, are more equal than others.

In the end, Animal Farm is one of the best written triads against the Soviet Union ever written. It is intelligent, simple, clever, and effective. While it in itself is not a master-piece of story-telling or engrossing plot, I do recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in European history, Communism, or the history of ideas. A good book in the end.

Final Rating; 3.5 out of 5.

~ by Michael on June 23, 2008.