A fable, an allegory, an admonishment

George Orwell
• Born: in India, June 25,
1903
• Died: in England, January
21, 1950
• Real Name: Eric Arthur
Blair
• Authored: Animal Farm,
1984, 10 other novels, many short stories
• Lived most of his life in
England
• Despised the British Empire

• Served in Burma as an Indian Imperial Police
• Fought and was wounded in the Spanish Civil War (shot in the neck)
• Considered himself a democratic socialist
• Hated communism and totalitarianism of any kind
• Worked as a journalist in later life and grew more despondent with communist ideals
• His two most popular books warn about the possibility of a nightmarish totalitarian future
• Died of tuberculosis in 1950

• Orwell said the idea for Animal
Farm came to him one day when he saw a large cart-horse being driven by a little boy, who would whip it when it tried to turn. “It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.”
• He felt that Stalin and the Russian
Communists had betrayed their revolution and their ideals.
• Written in 1943-4
• Published August 17, 1945

• Allegory, fable, satire, prophecy
• Did not get accepted at first due to Stalin’s popularity
• Chosen by Time Magazine as one of the best 100
English language novels between 1923-2005
• 31 st on list of Modern Library Lists of Best 20 th century novels
• on list of Great Books of the Western World
• “ . . . I tried with full consciousness of what I was doing to fuse political and artistic purpose into one whole,” says Orwell.

• Pigs are clever
• Pigs are clean
• Fast at remembering routines
• Know how to use mirrors (some study)
• Good at physical tricks
• Difficult for them to unlearn tasks

Despite their reputation for gluttony and poor hygiene . . .
• “Pigs like to lie around, they like to drink if given the chance, they’ll smoke and watch TV,” says Dr.
Lawrence Schook of
University of Illinois
• Their hearts, teeth and habits resemble humans
(how much of this Orwell was aware of, who knows).
• Good to study for human diseases

Lulu, the pig hero
• “I have never been able to fully imitate the noise of pigs. If you listen to happy pigs out in the open, they make many, many more noises than the proverbial
'grunt' and 'oink'. It seems as though they have a full vocabulary!” (JoAnn
Altsman, pig owner)
Lulu sensed her owner in trouble (Altsman was having a heart attack); Lulu couldn’t bark, so she waddled out onto the highway and lay herself down in front of an oncoming motorist; then, she led the motorist to Altsman. Fifteen more minutes, she would have died.

• Russian daily newspaper of the Soviet
Communist Party, published from 1912-1991 in Moscow; distributed nationwide; spread propaganda; means “Truth” in Russian

• Lowest working class, often used with reference to Marxism; earn a living by selling their labor

• In 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Party split into two groups, the more radical minority became known as the Bolsheviks
• This party was led into power by Lenin in the
October Revolution
• Advocated immediate and forceful seizure of power by the proletariat
• An extreme political radical, revolutionary, anarchist

• Refers to a series of revolutions in 1917 led to dismantle the Tsarist autocracy and created the Soviet Union
• Emperor (Nicholas II) was forced to abdicate and a provisional government was established
(February, 1917)
• Provisional government was later replaced by
Bolshevik rule (October, 1917)

• 1945-1991
• Served as a constant state of political and military tension between the United States and the Soviet
Union, two super powers with profound differences
• Stops short of full-scale war
• Each country possessed nuclear powers but did not meet in direct combat
• the United States won out in the end when Mikhail
Gorbachev introduced liberal reforms that began a series of peaceful revolutions, causing the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, leaving the United States the dominant military leader

• The Wall was built at the behest of the Soviet
Union to separate East and West Berlin during the Cold War.

• A type of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives either directly or through elected representatives
• A government by the people; rule of the majority; supreme power is vested in and exercised by the people
• The common people are the primary source of political power
• social equality and respect for the individual within a community