A Belated Trip Into English Literature: Animal Farm

I was not in AP English in high school. My university English consisted of a few composition courses and a playwriting course. But I've always considered myself well-read. In the last few years, it's become clear that I wasn't well-read, I had just read a lot of stuff.

So it's time to step back, visit Dickens, Faulkner, Joyce, Carroll and company. The first step was George Orwell's Animal Farm. I read 1984 in high school, and moved on from George Orwell. But I have kept a copy of Animal Farm for the future. Which was this week.

It's a diminutive book - just over 100 pages in the copy I have. The story is simple: assuming that farm animals could talk, what would happen? The story follows the animals as they overthrow the farmer and run their own society. As it happens, the first idea is to run the place as a commune. Before long, the animals that lead the rebellion over the farmer turn into cruel taskmasters themselves.

The allegory to totalitarian thinking is intentionally obvious - Orwell only uses the allegory to give his theories about the origins of totalitarianism the veneer of fiction. It's not far-fetched, and matches the morphing of totalitarian states from peasant rebellions to despotism in realy history as far as I can tell. The book is not complex. It is not involved. It does not have stunningly emotional moments. But it is a little chilling.

I also see many shared elements with Clavell's The Children's Story, which chronicles in about 50 large-type pages the Soviet invasion of the US. Both are worthy reads - both to understand the thinking of 1930s and 1980s America, the dangers of conformity and oligarchy (are you listening, GE?), and the poison of complacency.

Some animals may be more equal than others. And that truck driving away? It really is the butcher truck, no matter how many times FOX tells you it's the ambulance.

Next up: Farenheit 451