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Big Brother and Animals Part Two

© Gail Giordano

Animal Farm is a book about animals. One of the best summaries I have read captures what Orwell does through this book. “It tells how the animals captured the Manor Farm from its drunken incompetent farmer how they changed its name to Animal Farm and established it as a model community in which all animals were equal; how two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, gained control of the revolution and fought each other for the mastery; how the neighboring humans reacted and counter-attacked and were beaten off; how Napoleon ousted Snowball and declared him a traitor; how economic necessity compelled the animals to compromise with the human system; how Napoleon negotiated an alliance with the human enemy and exploited it to establish his personal dictatorship; how the farm learned that “Some animals are more equal than others” and their last state was as bad as their first; and how the ruling pigs became daily more and more indistinguishable from their human neighbors. “ (Animal Farm, Signet Classic Introduction pg. 8 –9)

Through carefully selected words, George Orwell weaves a tale, a tale that in essence appears to be a “fairy story” but in reality is cutting to the core of a problem. The rise of totalitarian powers, the prime example being Russia and Stalin, the overthrow of the emperors for a society run by “the people” but really and truly a bad dictatorship. If you take Russian Society and the last one hundred years Animal Farm does an excellent job capturing a period in time in their history of government.

Animal Farm is not the only book George Orwell is famous for, the other one is 1984. 1984 makes you think. It asks you to examine the world around you and especially in the age of technology it is even more appropriate than it was at the time it was written. One movie that has been produced reminds me of one of the ideas in 1984, the movie the Matrix. The Matrix talks about is the world we see really what it is or is it something that we have created in our mind. 1984 asks the same thing, is what we have been told really the truth or is there something else that is reality. How much of our world has been created by a government trying to control the way things are run. The big question running through out the book can be summed up in this quote “War is peace, Freedom is slavery, and Ignorance is Strength”. When the power to read, the ability to think independently are taken away you are left with out the power to make your own decisions. You are left without the power to create a world of your choosing. One of the things about the United States of America is it is a country of the people and by the people. A country in which there is supposed to be free speech, where you can read books like 1984 and come to a conclusion as to what you want to believe and how things are set up.

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