Animal Farm by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
This blog task is assigned by Dr. Vaidehi Hariyani Ma'am.
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Q.-1.| Which is your favorite character from “Animal Farm” by George Orwell? Why?
Ans.
My favorite character is Old Major.
As a democratic socialist, Orwell had a great deal of respect for Karl Marx, the German political economist, and even for Vladimir Ilych Lenin, the Russian revolutionary leader. His critique of Animal Farm has little to do with the Marxist ideology underlying the Rebellion but rather with the perversion of that ideology by later leaders. Major, who represents both Marx and Lenin, serves as the source of the ideals that the animals continue to uphold even after their pig leaders have betrayed them.
Though his portrayal of Old Major is largely positive, Orwell does include a few small ironies that allow the reader to question the venerable pig’s motives. For instance, in the midst of his long litany of complaints about how the animals have been treated by human beings, Old Major is forced to concede that his own life has been long, full, and free from the terrors he has vividly sketched for his rapt audience. He seems to have claimed a false brotherhood with the other animals in order to garner their support for his vision.
Q.-2.|Write 10 original lines from the text which you loved the most.
Ans.
1) “Four legs good, two legs bad.”
2) “And then, after a few preliminary tries, the whole farm burst out into Beasts of England in tremendous unison. The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the horses whinnied it, the ducks quacked it.”
3) “Then Snowball (for it was Snowball who was best at writing) took a brush between the two knuckles of his trotter, painted out MANOR FARM from the top bar of the gate and in its place painted ANIMAL FARM. This was to be the name of the farm from now onwards.”
4) “And yet the animals never gave up hope. More, they never lost, even for an instant, their sense of honour and privilege in being members of Animal Farm. They were still the only farm in the whole country—in all England!—owned and operated by animals.”
5) “After the hoisting of the flag all the animals trooped into the big barn for a general assembly which was known as the Meeting. Here the work of the coming week was planned out and resolutions were put forward and debated. It was always the pigs who put forward the resolutions. The other animals understood how to vote, but could never think of any resolutions of their own.”
6) “One night at about twelve o'clock there was a loud crash in the yard, and the animals rushed out of their stalls. . . . At the foot of the end wall of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written, there lay a ladder broken in two pieces. Squealer, temporarily stunned, was sprawling beside it, and near at hand there lay a lantern, a paintbrush, and an overturned pot of white paint.”
7) “After surveying the ground, Snowball declared that this was just the place for a windmill, which could be made to operate a dynamo and supply the farm with electrical power [to] light the stalls and warm them in winter . . . [The animals] listened in astonishment while Snowball conjured up pictures of fantastic machines which would do their work for them while they grazed at their ease in the fields or improved their minds with reading and conversation.”
8) “Out of spite, the human beings pretended not to believe that it was Snowball who had destroyed the windmill: they said that it had fallen down because the walls were too thin. The animals knew that this was not the case. Still, it had been decided to build the walls three feet thick this time instead of eighteen inches as before, which meant collecting much larger quantities of stone.”
9) “When they got up again, a huge cloud of black smoke was hanging where the windmill had been. Slowly the breeze drifted it away. The windmill had ceased to exist!”
10) “The windmill had been successfully completed at last, and the farm possessed a threshing machine and a hay elevator of its own, and various new buildings had been added to it. . . . The windmill, however, had not after all been used for generating electrical power. It was used for milling corn, and brought in a handsome money profit. The animals were hard at work building yet another windmill; when that one was finished, so it was said, the dynamos would be installed.”
Q.-3.|Interpret “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL. BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.” in your own words.
Ans.
While the novella is ostensibly a fairy tale-esque story of farm animals, it's really a thinly veiled allegory for the Soviet Union. The animals are led by a pair of pigs, Snowball (Trotsky) and Napoleon (Stalin), who lead a rebellion against the human owner of the farm. The animals successfully drive him out and establish Animal Farm. They agree to adopt the Seven Commandments of Animalism as their constitution. The most important of these is the last commandment: "All animals are equal."
Napoleon runs Snowball off the farm and gives himself full leadership. He gradually violates more and more of the commandments as his behavior becomes increasing like that of their previous human master. The climax comes years later when the animals spot Napoleon walking on his hind legs while carrying a whip (violations of the commandments) and discover that all the commandments have been reduced to simply "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Logically, this quote is nonsensical. To be equal means to be exactly the same, so there cannot be more or less equal. You are either equal or unequal. What it symbolizes is the open admission that the ideals of social justice and equality that inspired the animal's revolution will never come to fruition. Through all of Napoleon's previous transgressions, the animals held on to the hope that they could create the farm described by Old Major (Marx/Lenin). This line represents the moment they are forced to let go of that dream, and shows that Napoleon and the pigs have become just like the humans they overthrew. In this way, it defines the central thesis of the book--that the Soviet Union has abandoned the ideas that sparked its creation and adopted the oppression and tyranny of the government it replaced.
