Friday, June 15, 2007

the ANIMAL FARM


When my friend suggested, I started reading this famous book by George orwell. It is a brilliant allegory of the totalitarianism of Stalins rule in Russia. Orwell sarcastically portrays Stalin as Napolean a boar (though named after the french dictator). The book talks about the animal rebellion over the humans, in which all the animals in the manor farm decide to drive away their master Mr.Jones (the equivalent to tzar Nicholas II ) after being inspired by speech of the Major (equivalent to Marx or Lenin) ...

After they oust Mr.Jones and usurping the power, they make new 7 commandments for animals, thier own flag ..proclaim themselves to be a republic and name it as Animal Farm..

After the Death of the major, two boars Napolean and Snowball become the leaders and plan the roadmap for their prosperity without help of humans. Infact they decree that "Any thing on four legs or wings is a friend and anything on two legs is an enemy".

Napolean ,snowball and the whole pig family being naturally more intelligent than their fellow species, make rules to have a luxorious life when compared to others..Slowly differences develop between snowball n Napolean.Napolean with the help of ten huge dogs, whom he bred and fed eversince they were puppies, ousts out snowball and assumes power...

The rest is history as Napolean (like Stalin) suppresses others and with help of his followers and Squealer (analogy to the russina newspaper Pravda) convinces the comparitively unintelligent species to believe that whatever he does is rite. He slowly eliminates all his enemies. He removes the commandments, bans the "beasts of england" song and even removes the horn and the hoof on their Green flag..

It is very late and the few old animals who actually knew the motive of rebellion have become helpless by now --as their friends were all eliminated one by one by Napolean..

At the end the pigs (Napolean and party) learn to walk on two legs (hind legs) and they partner with humans owning neighbouring farms.The animals realize that the faces of the pigs now look almost exactly like the faces of humans and they can no longer easily tell the difference between them.