George Orwell, Animal Farm

George Orwell

Animal Farm

1. George Orwell’s biography
   Pick out the elements most significantly accounting for Orwell’s political writings.
   imperial police in Burma / vagrant in Paris and London / industrial Lancashire / the Spanish civil War / Nazism and Soviet Russia
   
2. Title and subtitle
   Define Animal Farm’s literary genre
   A Fairy Story, a tale or fable: the book is a satirical allegory with obvious parallels with historical events, notably those leading to the advent of a totalitarian state in the USSR, after a resounding revolution which abolished aristocratic privileges
   
3. Chapter one
   Sum it up
   
4. Explain

Initial situation

Narrator ? Animal characterisation ? Orator? Setting?

An omniscient narrator

As in a tale, the animal characters are endowed with human attributes: in fact they are very similar to human beings, down to language which they use quite naturally. Some, however, are less distinct / individualized than others (the cat / the hens / the pigs): they are depicted as groups rather than individuals. Major, Boxer, Clover, Muriel, Benjamin obviously have quite a significant role to play. They are therefore given names and attributes.

Old Major is portrayed as the respected father figure.
Simplicity of characterization serves a purpose: the message the “fable” has to deliver must be unequivocal / straightforward / plain.
The setting is the barn but it looks very quaintly organized for the rebellion to be kick-started in style… “Before long the other animals began to arrive and make themselves comfortable after their different fashions.” “Clover made a sort of wall round them with her great foreleg…” “the cat looked round for the warmest place”

Old Major’s speech

Content? Parallels? Vocabulary? Rhetorical devices?
A rabble-rouser. A politician’s account for his audience: a tale of misery and pain, absence of rights (freedom), hope (“no animal knows the meaning of happiness after he is a year old”
A call to arms / to rebel /to rise up / take up arms against the oppressor: MAN.

Better prospects are possible (the dream of a better world ”comfort / dignity).

The enemy is defined.

Everybody is called upon –nominally- to face the grim reality (…)
Then the call to rebellion is made even clearer (34). The message is delivered forcefully, in short sentences. The rules and orders are set. These are undoubtedly the basics of the future Revolution. One question is put to the vote. Then again the goals are hammered in and the rules hard-wired. Its is Major’s legacy, not unlike the Ten Commandments: it sets what is right and wrong.

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