Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

I will work Harder

It has been many years since my last reading of George Orwell's Animal Farm and yet there are several scenes still fresh in my mind. The book's hundred plus pages made it an easy choice from the assigned reading list in school yet that book made the biggest impression on me. As a fan of satire, I had already devoured Orwell's 1984 as well as Gulliver's Travels by Swift but it was the simplicity of Animal Farm that impressed me the most.

Who could not love loyal Boxer, the biggest supporter of the new regime? His blind faith of the new leaders no matter what they did, allowed the pigs to repress the rest of the animals as much as the humans did. Poor Boxer, the strongest of the animals knew in his mind that what the new leaders were doing was wrong but his heart refused to accept it. His belief in the Seven Commandments written on the barn wall made him the leaders' biggest supporter and even when they appear to have been changed, he refuses to listen to the naysayers.

It is obvious why the Soviet Union banned Orwell's book, even with his original title, 'Animal Farm: A Fairy Story,' it is easy to see it is about the workers revolution. Most of us know that power corrupts but Animal Farm shows us it is only the mindless support of the followers that allows this to happen. The metaphor of the animals as workers and the pigs as the new ruling class or Polit Bureau is thinly veiled and easy to see.

As for my favorite scene, it comes long after Boxer is taken away. The pigs now live in the farmer's old house away from the other animals even though it was forbidden by one of the original commandments. One evening there is a summit between the pigs and the farmers down the road. Curious, the animals gather around the window in an attempt to find the meaning of this unusual meeting. As they gaze through the window it is noted how much the pigs appear to look the same as the humans.

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