Trust & Obey

I know, I picked another old book, just hear me out! This book is truly a timeless classic. It’s one you could read to a kid or read for youself! This is a story of a farm that decides it’s time to start thinking for themselves, time to take back what the farmers stole, it’s time for an animal revolution.

In Animal Farm by George Orwell, Mr. Jones’ farm is fed up with the way he and his wife have been treating them. The pigs are fattened up to be slaughtered, the chickens have their eggs stolen and are also slaughtered, and the horses are worked until they die. They are sick of it but can’t do anything to fix their problem. Well, one fateful day an elderly pig named Major tells the other farm animals that they need to rise up. The animals will never be able to be happy as long as the humans reign supreme. This idea manifests in a belief called “animalism” and is the catalyst for the revolution headed up by pigs, Napoleon and Snowball.

The reason for Animal Farm‘s popularity is George Orwell’s ability to show how communism comes to be with style and creativity. The pigs start out with good intentions, or at least it appears that way, but things go downhill. There are seven commandments that pigs designed and expect the animals to follow. However, one by one the pigs begin to break those rules and deny that they are doing it. They make footnotes to each and every law. As the story continues, you can tell that Napoleon and Snowball don’t really believe all they are teaching, including the idea that “all animals are equal.”

Another element of communism I noticed in Animal Farm is the brainwashing. Dogs Bluebell and Jessie both give birth to puppies, nine between the both of them, and the pigs state that they need to take them away to teach them the ways of ‘animalism.’ Napoleon isolated them by putting them in a loft that could only be reached by a ladder and didn’t let them out until he needed them to further his cause. Napoleon later does the same with some piglets.

This book is a big winner for me! The discreet and whimsical way Orwell shows why communism is bad was such a bold move. He does a great job showing the steady digression of “animalism” and how the animals begin to stop thinking for themselves. Boxer – a hard-working, dedicated horse- even develops the maxim “Napoleon is always right” which is taken advantage of later in the story. Orwell really knows how to teach about politics in a way that is interesting and fun.

The possible negative to this book is that it’s not very fast-paced. Even though it’s only a two hour read the story wasn’t designed to feel like the fast descent into communism but a slow steady track to animal enslaving animal. Other than that, this is a book I would highly encourage to just about anyone of any age. When I first read the book, I didn’t see the communism as much as I do now but I still got plenty of good thoughts from Animal Farm. I got a birds-eye view of what a leader shouldn’t be and that people should be able to think for themselves. Now that I’m older, I see the communism and demand for total unity. I see, once again, that a leader with an iron fist may get the job done but they are rarely loved, but rather feared.