Animal Farm: Communism Through The Eyes of George Orwell
Throughout history, writers have written about many different subjects
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based on their personal experiences. George Orwell was the pen name of Eric
Blair. He is one of the most famous political satirists of the twentieth
century. He was born in Bengal, India in 1903 to an English Civil Servant and
died in 1950. He attended Eton from 1917 to 1921, and served with the Indian
Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927 before moving to Europe.Two of his
most famous books, Animal Farm, written in 1946, and Nineteen Eighty-Four,
written in 1949, were written about the political and social environment
surrounding his life. “The driving force behind his two satires is an intense
revulsion against totalitarianism, combined with an even stronger revulsion
against its defenders among left-wing intellectuals.”1 In most of George
Orwell?s books and essays, there is a strong autobiographical element due to the
fact that he spent many years living with Communists in northern Great Britain
(a small number of people started to follow Communism in northern Great Britain
when it started in Russia). George Orwell?s writing was affected greatly by his
personal beliefs about Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism, and
by the revolts, wars, and revolutions going on in Europe and Russia at the time
of his writings.
George Orwell was a Socialist2 himself, and he despised Russian
Communism3, and what it stood for. Orwell shows this hatred towards Communist
Russia in a letter he wrote to Victor Gollancz saying, “For quite fifteen years
I have regarded that regime with plain horror.”4 Orwell wrote this letter in
1947, ten years after announcing his dislike of Communism. However, he had
thought a great deal about Communism and what he disliked about if for a long
time before he announced it to the public. Orwell “did not expect anything good
from the Communist”5 and therefore Communism personally did not affect him, but
“He was concerned with it (Communism) only because it was a problem for
others.”6
In Animal Farm, “an animal fable satirizing Communism,”7 Orwell uses
farm animals in England to satirize Russian Communism and its leaders. One
animal he uses is a pig named Napoleon, whose counterpart in the Russian
Revolution is Joseph Stalin. After Napoleon takes charg…
…r, Alfred G. “Marx, Karl.” World Book Encyclopedia.1988 ed.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc., 1949
Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1946
Stansky, Peter and Abraham, William. Orwell: The Transformation. New York, NY:
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1979
Stansky,Peter. On Nineteen Eighty-Four. San Francisco, California: W.H. Freeman
and Company, 1983
Wadsworth, Frank W. “Orwell, George” World Book Encyclopedia. 1988 ed.
Woodcock, George. The Crystal Spirit a study of George Orwell. Boston,
Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company,1966
Voorhees, Richard J. The Paradox of George Orwell. New York, NY: Purdue Research
Foundation,1961
“Stalin, Joseph.” World Book Encyclopedia. 1988 ed.
“Lenin, V.I.” World Book Encyclopedia. 1988 ed.
