It should therefore be regarded as a leg. “A bird’s wing, comrades,’ he said, ‘is an organ of propulsion and not of manipulation. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.” He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.
The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations.” This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. “If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means.
SMART NOTES ANIMAL FARM HOW TO
“revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job.” Without giving the story away, here are some choice quotes from the book, which I hope you will read: Somehow in the world of Animal Farm there are always good reasons for bad things happening, since the only reasons you are allowed to hear are ones that come from those in power, and soon you are compelled to want to believe life isn’t so bad at all, as it’s less scary than the alternative. I found myself asking how can it be so easy to separate the spirit of the law from the letter of the law? But then I think of the history of religion and mass movements, or debates about the 2nd amendment (where smart people on all sides have entirely opposing interpretations of the same handful of words) and know there are all too familiar patterns, dark ones, at work here. Unless there are opposing forces successfully working against denial and indifference, what hope could there be? Or could easily choose to ignore it out of denial, stupidity, indifference or (increasingly) fear. But in Animal Farm as each layer of morality is stripped away it happens so slowly and naturally that it’s comprehendible some wouldn’t notice it at all. Somehow we imagine that big changes come in waves, as popular history talks of revolutions and wars as sudden, dramatic events. The biggest surprise in this reading of the book was the gentle the slope of moral decay. By using a fairy tale it’s easy to keep some distance from what happens in Animal farm, after all it’s just a bunch of animals, but at the same time any reader understands that this is an allegory, and it’s making commentary about us all along. In this regard the book reminded me of Lord of The Flies, where little by little the assumptions about human nature are stripped away and what is left is surprising, true and terrifying all at once. The insight of the book, beyond the allegorical fun of comparing people to animals, is its encapsulation of the nature of power. I’m also embarrassed to admit that for all this time I never knew that Pink Floyd’s Animals album was largely inspired by Orwell’s Book. While it’s well known that the context Orwell was thinking of for the story was the Russian revolution, many themes resonated with the America and world I find myself in today. I’ve read Orwell’s Animal Farm three times now: once was in high school when I wasn’t paying attention, another was in my 20s when I felt I owed it a second chance and then again this week as part of an inquiry into what’s happening in the world.
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