"Four Legs Good. Two Legs Bad."
Manor Farm is like any other
English farm, except for a drunken
owner, Mr. Jones, incompetent
workers, and oppressed animals.
Fed up with the ignorance of their
human masters, the animals rise
up in rebellion and take over the
farm.
Led by intellectually superior pigs
like Snowball and Napoleon, the
animals how to take charge of
their destiny and remove the
inequities of their lives. But as
time passes, they realize that
things aren't happening quite as
expected.
Animal Farm is, on one level, a
simple story about barnyard
animals. On a much deeper level,
it is a savage political satire on
corrupted ideals, misdirected
revolutions, and class conflict--themes as valid today as they
were sixty years ago.
• Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's
fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has
rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the
Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to
Write a Book Report About. (The latter is
three pages longer and less fun to read.)
• Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment
with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a
nearly perfect piece of writing, both an
engaging story and an allegory that actually
works.
When the downtrodden beasts of
Manor Farm oust their drunken
human master and take over
management of the land, all are
awash in collectivist zeal.
Everyone willingly works
overtime, productivity soars, and
for one brief, glorious season,
every belly is full…..
The animals' Seven Commandment
credo is painted in big white letters
on the barn. All animals are equal. No
animal shall drink alcohol, wear
clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow
four-footed creature. Those that go
upon four legs or wings are friends
and the two-legged are, by definition,
the enemy. Too soon, however, this
begin to change….
IMPORTANT VOCABULARY
SATIRE:
• The use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in
exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
• A literary composition, in verse or prose, in which
human folly and vice are held up to scorn,
derision, or ridicule.
• A work of literature that mocks social
conventions, another work of art, or anything its
author thinks ridiculous.
• Satire often emphasizes the weakness in general,
more than a weak person/character, and usually
implies moral judgment and corrective purpose
VICE:
• An immoral or evil habit or practice.
• Vice designates a habit that is truly detrimental or
evil. For example, drinking alcohol, gambling, and
smoking are vices that people have.
• Synonyms: fault, failing, flaw, weakness, shortcoming; also
corruption or sin.
• Antonyms: virtue.
FOLLY:
• A foolish action, practice, or idea; an absurdity
• A costly and foolish undertaking; unwise investment or
expenditure
• Synonyms: imprudence, rashness, mistake, foolishness,
indiscretion, madness, lunacy.
ALLEGORY:
• Allegories are similar to metaphors, because
in both, the author uses one subject to
represent another, seemingly unrelated,
subject.
• However, unlike metaphors, which are
generally short and contained within a few
lines, an allegory extends its representation
over the course of an entire story, novel, or
poem.
FABLE:
• A short tale to teach a moral lesson, often with
animals or inanimate objects as characters
• A narrative form, usually featuring animals that
behave and speak as human beings, told in order
to highlight human follies and weaknesses. A
moral-or lesson for behavior-is woven into the
story and often explicitly formulated at the end.
(See also beast fable.)
• A beast fable is a prose or verse fable or short
story that usually has a moral. In beast fables
animal characters are represented as acting with
human feelings and motives. Among the bestknown examples in Western literature are those
attributed to the legendary Greek author Aesop.
Dystopia:
• a society characterized by human misery, such as
squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.
Also, an imaginary place where everything is as
bad as it can be
• Word Origin and History for dystopia:
n. "imaginary bad place," 1868, apparently
coined by J.S. Mill ("Hansard Commons"),
from Greek dys- "bad, abnormal, difficult"
(see dys-) + utopia. Related: Dystopian.
Antonym: Utopia: literally: no place, from Greek
ou not + topos a place. Any real or imaginary
society, place, state, etc., considered to be perfect
or ideal, any visionary system of political or social
perfection.
George Orwell
• Born Eric Arthur Blair, George Orwell created some of
the sharpest satirical fiction of the 20th century.
• Orwell is best known for two novels, Animal Farm and
Nineteen Eighty-Four, both of which were published
toward the end of his life.
• Animal Farm (1945) was an anti-Soviet
satire in a pastoral setting featuring
two pigs as its main protagonists. These
pigs were said to represent Josef Stalin
and Leon Trotsky. The novel brought
Orwell great acclaim and financial
rewards.
• He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of
the major political movements of his times, including
imperialism, fascism, and communism.
• Imperialism
Acquisition by a government of other
governments or territories, or of
economic or cultural power over other
nations or territories, often by force.
– Colonialism is a form of imperialism.
• Colonialism is the control of one nation by
“transplanted” people of another nation —
often a geographically distant nation that has a
different culture and dominant racial or ethnic
group.
– Note: A classic example of colonialism is the control of India
by Britain from the eighteenth century to 1947.
• Fascism:
• A system of government that flourished in Europe from the 1920s to
the end of World War II. Germany under Adolf Hitler, Italy under
Mussolini, and Spain under Franco were all fascist states.
• As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses
a magnetic personality, wears a showy uniform, and rallies his followers by mass
parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of
both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in
Germany.
• Although both communism and fascism are forms of
totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the
means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement
of economic equality.
• In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single
charismatic leader (the “cult of personality”), which is the cornerstone of fascism.
• Whereas communists are considered left-wing, fascists are usually described as
right-wing.
• Note: Today, the term fascist is used loosely to refer to military
dictatorships, as well as governments or individuals that profess
racism and that act in an arbitrary, high-handed manner.
• Communism
• An economic and social system envisioned by
the nineteenth-century German scholar Karl
Marx. In theory, under communism, all means
of production are owned in common, rather
than by individuals.
• In practice, a single authoritarian party
controls both the political and economic
systems. In the twentieth century,
communism was associated with the
economic and political systems of China and
the Soviet Union and of the satellites of the
Soviet Union.
• In 1949, Orwell published another masterwork,
Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984 in later editions). This
bleak vision of the world divided into three oppressive
nations stirred up controversy among reviewers, who
found this fictional future too despairing. In the novel,
Orwell gave readers a glimpse into what would
happen if the government controlled every detail of a
person's life, down to their own private thoughts.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four proved to be another huge
success for the author, but he had little time to enjoy it.
By this time, Orwell was in the late stages of his battle
with tuberculosis. He died on January 21, 1950, in a
London hospital. He may have passed away all too
soon, but his ideas and opinions have lived on through
his work.
Surprisingly, Orwell was a socialist.
The reason he hated communism so much is
because it was not pure socialism -- he
distrusted the leaders who lived in mansions
while the common folk slaved in the fields.
Communism, he thought, was just another
way for the elite to control the majority of
peasants.
• Socialism:
• An economic system in which the
production and distribution of goods are
controlled substantially by the government
rather than by private enterprise, and in
which cooperation rather than competition
guides economic activity.
• There are many varieties of socialism. Some
socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the
government maintains the dominant
influence over the economy; others insist
on an abolition of private enterprise.
• All communists are socialists, but not all
socialists are communists.
• Socialism, in Marxist
theory, is the stage
following capitalism in the
transition of a society to
communism, characterized
by the imperfect
implementation of
collectivist principles.
Thanks in part to Animal Farm, much of
the Western world finally realized the
danger of communism. Soon a Cold War
began between the world's greatest
superpowers- the Soviet Union and the
United States. In the end, America would
prove that capitalism and democracy
could outlive a system of governmentmandated equality.
Cold War
Definition:
Rivalry after World War II between the Soviet Union
and its satellites and the democratic countries of
the Western world, under the leadership of the
United States.
A constant nonviolent state of hostility between the
Soviet Union and the United States. The Cold War
began shortly after World War II, with the rapid
extension of Soviet influence over eastern Europe
and North Korea. With the collapse of communism
in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the
Cold War ended.
". . . remember always your duty of enmity
towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes
upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes
upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And
remember also that in fighting against Man,
we must not come to resemble him . . . All the
habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no
animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind.
Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all
brothers. No animal must ever kill any other
animal. All animals are equal."
--Animal Farm, from Old Major's speech
It has been said that
Animal Farm is a byproduct of
George Orwell's long-held hatred of
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is defined as:
•
Domination by a government of all political,
social, and economic activities in a nation.
• Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the
twentieth century.
• The term is applied both to fascist
governments (fascism) and to many forms of
communism.
Josef Stalin
• After Lenin's death, in 1924, Stalin set out to destroy the old party
leadership and take total control. At first, he had people removed from
power through bureaucratic shuffling and denunciations. Many were
exiled abroad to Europe and the Americas, including presumed Lenin
successor Leon Trotsky. However, further paranoia set in and Stalin soon
conducted a vast reign of terror, having people arrested in the night and
put before spectacular show trials. Potential rivals were accused of
aligning with capitalist nations, convicted of being "enemies of the
people" and summarily executed. The purges eventually extended beyond
the party elite to local officials suspected of counterrevolutionary
activities.
• In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin reversed the Bolshevik agrarian
policy by seizing land given earlier to the peasants and organizing
collective farms. This essentially reduced the peasants back to serfs, as
they had been during the monarchy. Stalin believed that collectivism
would accelerate food production, but the peasants resented losing their
land and working for the state. Millions were killed in forced labor or
starved during the ensuing famine. Stalin also set in motion rapid
industrialization that initially achieved huge successes, but over time cost
millions of lives and vast damage to the environment. Any resistance was
met with swift and lethal response; millions of people were exiled to the
labor camps of the Gulag or were executed.
Leon Trotsky
• Communist Leon Trotsky helped ignite
the Russian Revolution of 1917, and
built the Red Army afterward.
• As the Soviet government developed,
he engaged in a power struggle
against Joseph Stalin, which he lost,
leading to his exile by Stalin, and,
eventually, his murder by Soviet
agents.
THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS
1.Whatever goes upon two legs is an
enemy.
2.Whatever goes upon four legs, or has
wings, is a friend.
3.No animal shall wear clothes.
4.No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5.No animal shall drink alcohol.
6.No animal shall kill any other animal.
7.All animals are equal.
COMMANDMENTS FROM OLD MAJOR AND
HOW THEY TIE INTO MAN’S CORRUPTION:
• No animal is ever to live in a house. (Caring more about
possessions)
• No animal is ever to sleep in a bed. (Becoming lazy-spending
too much time in bed sleeping instead of working-luxury)
• No animal is ever to wear clothes. (Pride in appearance)
• No animal is ever to drink alcohol. (A Vice, Drinking to excessforgetting duties)
• No animal is ever to smoke tobacco. (A Vice, Ruining health,
expensive habit)
• No animal is ever to touch money. (Money corrupts)
• No animal is ever to engage in trade. (Human Folly, profitmaking)
• No animal is ever to tyrannize his own kind. (Slavery)
• No animal must ever kill any other animal. (Murder)
• All animals are equal. (Competition is self-serving)
Look at the names of the characters.
Why did Orwell use the names he did?
How do the names fit the characters?
Examples:
•
Mr. Jones could represent any man. Jones is a common a name as Smith. If he
were named Mr. Edgewater, it would individualize him too much. All we know about
Jones is that he drinks too much and sometimes is cruel to his animals.
•
Napoleon is a regal name, one fit for an emperor, a tyrant.
•
Snowball is white and represents a thing that melts in the sun or breaks up when it
hits a solid object, such as Napoleon. Certainly the name shows no leadership.
•
Squealer does just that. He spies for Napoleon and tells on the other animals.
•
Moses, the crow, like Moses in the Bible, is there to lead the animals to the
promised land of Sugarcandy Mountain.
•
Boxer has great stamina, willpower, and strength, and does whatever he is told. He
is not too intelligent, but he is loyal. Many human boxers could fit this
description.