A Review of ``Animal Farm'' by George Orwell

This book is necessarily compared with Orwell's most well-known work, ``1984'', and this also serves
well as a point from which to review this book.  The work is an analogy between the Soviet Union and
a farm taken over by its livestock.  This work is written in a style more easily read than ``1984'',
and I'm not certain which I prefer between them.  The work can be read easily in well under one day.

An old pig named Major, an analogue to Karl Marx, tells the other farm animals of a dream he had, of
a world without humans in which animals lived together in harmony.  Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon,
expand Major's thoughts into a system called Animalism.  Following days of hunger, the animals rebel
and successfully drive out Mr. Jones and his farmhands, then renaming the Manor Farm to Animal Farm.

Afterwards, the two primary pigs reveal the seven commandments to which they've reduced the ideas of
Animalism.  Before the third chapter begins, the cracks begin to form, with fresh milk missing.  The
animals work hard, and their different skills allow them to harvest their crops better than the men.
Soon thereafter, the pigs explain to the other animals of how they need the milk more, and this is a
common event as this story continues, with the pigs taking more and more of the food for themselves.

Some of the animals, the sheep in particular, are too stupid to remember the seven commandments, and
instead remember the slogan ``two legs bad, four legs good'' although, by the end of the story, this
has changed to ``two legs good, four legs better'' after the pigs learned to walk on their hindlegs.

In sum, the story is a very predictable downward spiral, and anyone lightly familiar with the Soviet
Union will see the parallels.  The pigs gradually alter the seven commandments to excuse their acts,
while becoming increasingly like the men they supposedly despise, until the last commandment becomes
the only one, from ``all animals are equal'' to add ``but some animals are more equal than others''.

The rubicon of the pigs to me was when they sell an old and injured horse to a knacker, for whiskey,
the precise fate Major had told the horse would befall him at the hands of Mr. Jones.  The end scene
shows the animals spying on a dinner party between the pigs and humans and, after an argument breaks
out, it's noted how the animals can't tell the pigs from the humans; it's a deeply unsatisfying end.

I suppose, between ``Animal Farm'' and ``1984'', that the latter wins, but I recommend reading both.
So I've read two of George Orwell's most famous works, and can't help but think him to be overrated.
I look forward to finding and watching a copy of the CIA-funded, animated film version of this book.

I'm lightly acquainted with a man who left the Soviet Union to live in the United States of America,
and he once told me that Soviet industrialization was necessary, to avoid predation by other powers.
After learning of what's happened to the Middle East and its attempts, I wholly believe him in this.
I can just as easily, if not more easily, imagine the same analogy applied to my country, the United
States of America, which so long ago abandoned or spat on each and every of its supposed principles.
When framed this way, the story almost seems unfair to the Soviet Union.  I'll have to see if George
Orwell ever wrote a story about, say, rats forming some analogy to the international banking cartel.
.