Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell
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Book Reviews of Animal Farm and 1984
Book Review: Two Valuable Elements of Our Literary and Political History
Summary: 5 Stars
Many of us were assigned these books to read in school by thoughtful teachers. All of us should read them. In both, George Orwell gives us the tools to see exactly what liberty means and why we cannot afford to lose it.
In "Animal Farm," the fable is sufficiently removed from human experience that you can read this one to quite young children, just as you can "Alice in Wonderland" or other classics which say more each time you read them as you grow up. Even a first-grader could see the relationship of the politics of the barnyard to the politics of the playground. The jeering refrain of "Surely you don't want Jones back" can easily be recognized as the propaganda fallacy called "Reductio ad Hitlarum." Whenever the ruling pigs ran out of useful things to say, they fell back on slogans which meant nothing, but which could be molded to mean whatever they wanted them to mean in a given circumstance.
The completely classic "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" is one we must keep in mind whenever politicians start using words as if they mean the reverse of what they do mean.
1984, too, has its beautifully classic lines. The main characters are all members of the Ingsoc Party (English Socialism). It is not until well into the book that we learn they are only some 15% of the population; the rest are proles. The proles are easily dismissed as insignificant: "They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect." Use that line the next time someone tells you it's not important to educate our entire population to the best of their capabilities.
When the main character, Winston Smith, attempts to placate his tormenter by saying "You are ruling over us for our own good," he is scorned as "stupid, Winston, stupid." The party big shot responds with one of the most chilling lines I have ever read: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever."
Through the medium of conversations in the lunch room of the "Ministry of Truth," Orwell is able to tell us much about the creation and preservation of a totalitarian state. One key is the control over language which the Party exercises: "Newspeak." One of the people working on the Newspeak dictionary explains it to Winston: "You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words--scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting language down to the bone." He brags that very soon "all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron--they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be."
Putting these two in a single hardbound volume and adding a thoughtful introduction by Christopher Hitchens was a stroke of genius on the part of Harcourt Books. It will make it all the easier for professors of political science, literature, history, psychology . . . indeed, if it was not such a contradiction with regard to books so dedicated to liberty, I'd say make them required reading.
Book Review: Both Worldy Paranoia Classics
Summary: 5 Stars
Both works are inspiring pieces of worldly paranoia, that is truth, quoted well into the twenty first century as the future, and it is, not because mankind doesn't think it will ever go this way, but because we know full well we are, but somehow are allowing it to happen everyday. It is decentralization of power from the human being, in all aspects of one's life, to a higher power, a bigger cause, communism (more so in Animal Farm; but it would be error to say that it is just politics Orwell is hinting at) called the great Lucifer because all was given to the collective body and not to God, now God is the great Lucifer because we give ourselves to the collective body of something that we can not prove, so Science is the great Lucifer, producing weapons to kill the world a million times over, toxins to poison us a million times over, are all forms of giving to a collective body the nature of death? Is it the giving to a collective body that robs the soul of its power? Is it giving oneself wholly and utterly to something other than one's own self the conduit of decent into the investment of despair. 1984 sees men and women working their themselves to skin and bone to achieve a greater good that never emerges, the ultimate failings masked by a strict authoritative regime, BIG BROTHER, the power all seeing and ever controlling, rewriting history, editing the world around them, at war with this nation one minute and switching to another the next, neighbours up and vanish and protagonists invest in each other for but a fleeting glimpse of love only to be captured by the THOUGHT POLICE for engaging in illegal activity, men at the top of this society using torture and mind control to enforce a pathology of unquestionable and undeniable supremacy of all the power to the BIG BROTHER system, and that this is the system and that is why they are alive at all, at which point we question if it is worth living at all to which Orwell delivers a resounding, no, of course it is not worth living this life, why bother at all, and that this is a piece of work that must be understood by everyone and anyone who can read and is certainly mandatory reading for anyone in least bit interested in politics or political science.
Unfortunately however we tend to vote in military commanders, lawyers and extreme capitalists into government and then ask why it is all going down hill.
The problem is there is no terminology in the English language to describe the act of one human being killing their unborn future children by process of setting up a bad management system with a legal body incorporated into that system before they die. This prison kills, yet it is justified. 1984 is maybe that word, filicide being the closest English equivalent.
Book Review: Two variations on corruption
Summary: 5 Stars
Orwell was a socialist and genuinely believed in the ideals represented by Lenin's revolution in Russia. So when Stalin came to power and the dream of communism crumbled to a very different reality Orwell was very disturbed. The novels Animal Farm and 1984 were both written in response to the failure of socialism in Russia.
1984 - The novel is always dark. No happy beginning, no happy middle and no happy ending. It follows the story of Winston Smith. He lives in a society in which the government can at any time monitor anyone. Hidden microphones and cameras are omnipresent. He doesn't love the government, which is the only crime recognized - a thought crime. It is important to read this book before throwing around terms like "Orwellian" and "Big Brother" It has been so influential on society that it introduced these terms which are now used by people who haven't read the book.
Animal Farm - A less shocking variation on the theme of corruption, told in the form of a children's story. It tells the story of animals who overthrow the oppressive farmer and found a government based on the principle of equality: "All animals are equal." The pigs are more intelligent and so have the leadership roles in the new Animal Farm. There is a pig counterpart for Trotsky and Lenin and Stalin and every other leader of Russia from the revolution until the 40's. The plot to Animal Farm parallels the history of Russia. Things go from idealistic to very bad, and eventually "All animals are created equal, some are more equal than others."
Book Review: Scary but a needed read
Summary: 5 Stars
I cut out the forward since I believe the person to have written it to be an atheist and as a Christian I didn't want that and I didn't want to lend it to friends with that in there.
The stories where scary and told stories of massive oppression.
However they should be a lession to us as well of what can happen when certain people are allowed to go power mad and violate your God given basic rights that we all have.
When things like The 7 Commandments Of Animalism are changed around,added on to, no matter how small can mean big trouble.
We in the US for example need to remember our Consitutional rights and when they are violated we need to speak up and stand out ground of not letting this happen. Even today here in the US there are people in the government that have "pleged" to uphold the Consitution yet when that is done and over with they make up "loop-holes" or try to change around the words when they speak of it to suit they're own selfish needs and take advantage of people.
These storys may have been fictional but they are based on the truth of something that can really happen and sadly still happens today in this world (ex.North Korea).
We must stand up to defend our God given rights. Don't let this play out in your country if you can stop it at all costs. The earlyer the intervention the better.
Hold people accountable and question atthority.
Book Review: Must Read
Summary: 5 Stars
George Orwell's classic works warning against the rise of the State as the arbiter and guardian of human well-being are more pertinent now than ever. While the threat of Communism is receding, there is an American intellectual love-affair with socialism that ignores the quagmire that Western Europe has become and remains well after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In easy to understand, simplistic storytelling, Orwell traces the replacement of one system of domination and exploitation with another in "Animal Farm". And astute followers of current events as well as history will note more than a few startling prognostications in "1984". Relegating these books to the Cold War period does not do them justice or adequately account for the many guises that human avarice and greed for power can take.
These stories should be mandatory reading - not just in school, but throughout our lives as reminders of how quickly and easily freedom can be replaced with slavery.