Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945.
According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"), and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), he wrote that Animal Farm
was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what
he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one
whole".
The animals of the Manor Farm live in a bad situation because their farmer Mr. Jones, a mean and always drunk man, exploits them. One day Old Major,
an old pig, called a meeting of all the animals and told them about a
dream that he had had the previous night. He had dreamed about an old
song 'Beasts of England'
that started a resistance against the human beings. Everyone was very
excited. But Old Major died a few days later and two young pigs,
Snowball and Napoleon, started leading the preparations for the Rebellion.
About three months later they revolted against Mr. Jones and they took
over the farm. The purpose of the revolution was to create a fair
society made only by animals and based on seven commandments
like “Four legs good, two legs bad” and most important one: "All
animals are equal". They also changed the name of the farm to "Animal
Farm". Snowball, an inventive and vivacious pig and Napoleon, a big and
cruel-looking pig, started to fight for leadership. In the meantime Mr.
Jones wanted to get the farm back but the animals succeeded in the
battle and Mr. Jones was forced to run away.
One day, when Snowball
announced his plans to build a windmill,
Napoleon arrived in the farm with nine big and cruel dogs that made
Snowball run away bleeding. From that day Napoleon was the real dictator
of the farm; if an animal didn't agree with him, he was eaten up by his
dogs. If something went wrong (like when the windmill they'd worked so
hard on was wrecked), Napoleon blamed it on Snowball, who, according to
him, was sneaking around Animal Farm ruining everything. When Boxer, the
strongest horse in the farm, lost his strength because of old age and
fell while he was building a windmill, Napoleon sent him to be
slaughtered. Now Napoleon had pity on nobody. He and the pigs were like
Mr. Jones - they exploited the other animals, they took advantage of the
foolishness of some animals and they came into contact with human
beings for business although they had said it was forbidden. In the end
they became like human beings, they started to walk on their hind legs
and they changed the old maxim with a new one: “Four legs good, two legs
better”. Nothing was changed and their resistance seemed to be useless.
Egyptian
Junta including El-Sisi
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