"Four Legs Good. Two Legs Bad."

Manor Farm is like any other English farm, except for a drunken owner, Mr. Jones, incompetent workers, and oppressed animals. Fed up with the ignorance of their human masters, the animals rise up in rebellion and take over the farm.

Led by intellectually superior pigs like Snowball and Napoleon, the animals how to take charge of their destiny and remove the inequities of their lives. But as time passes, they realize that things aren't happening quite as expected.

Animal Farm is, on one level, a simple story about barnyard animals. On a much deeper level, it is a savage political satire on corrupted ideals, misdirected revolutions, and class conflict---themes as valid today as they were sixty years ago.

• Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.)

• Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works.

When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken

human master and take over management of the land, all are

awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works

overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season,

every belly is full…..

The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters

on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear

clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends

and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, this

begin to change….

IMPORTANT VOCABULARYSATIRE:

• The use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

• A literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

• A work of literature that mocks social conventions, another work of art, or anything its author thinks ridiculous.

• Satire often emphasizes the weakness in general, more than a weak person/character, and usually implies moral judgment and corrective purpose

VICE: • An immoral or evil habit or practice.• Vice designates a habit that is truly detrimental or evil. For

example, drinking alcohol, gambling, and smoking are vices that people have.

• Synonyms: fault, failing, flaw, weakness, shortcoming; also corruption or sin.

• Antonyms: virtue.

FOLLY:• A foolish action, practice, or idea; an absurdity• A costly and foolish undertaking; unwise investment or

expenditure• Synonyms: imprudence, rashness, mistake, foolishness,

indiscretion, madness, lunacy.

ALLEGORY: • Allegories are similar to metaphors, because

in both, the author uses one subject to represent another, seemingly unrelated, subject.

• However, unlike metaphors, which are generally short and contained within a few lines, an allegory extends its representation over the course of an entire story, novel, or poem.

FABLE:• A short tale to teach a moral lesson, often with

animals or inanimate objects as characters• A narrative form, usually featuring animals that

behave and speak as human beings, told in order to highlight human follies and weaknesses. A moral-or lesson for behavior-is woven into the story and often explicitly formulated at the end. (See also beast fable.)

• A beast fable is a prose or verse fable or short story that usually has a moral. In beast fables animal characters are represented as acting with human feelings and motives. Among the best-known examples in Western literature are those attributed to the legendary Greek author Aesop.

Dystopia:• a society characterized by human misery, such as

squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding. Also, an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be

• Word Origin and History for dystopia:n. "imaginary bad place," 1868, apparently

coined by J.S. Mill ("Hansard Commons"), from Greek dys- "bad, abnormal, difficult" (see dys-) + utopia. Related: Dystopian.Antonym: Utopia: literally: no place, from Greek ou not + topos a place. Any real or imaginary society, place, state, etc., considered to be perfect or ideal, any visionary system of political or social perfection.

George Orwell• Born Eric Arthur Blair, George Orwell created some of the

sharpest satirical fiction of the 20th century.

• Orwell is best known for two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, both of which were published toward the end of his life.

• Animal Farm (1945) was an anti-Soviet satire in a pastoral setting featuring two pigs as its main protagonists. These pigs were said to represent Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky. The novel brought Orwell great acclaim and financial rewards.

• He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of the major political movements of his times, including imperialism, fascism, and communism.

• Imperialism Acquisition by a government of other governments or territories, or of economic or cultural power over other nations or territories, often by force. – Colonialism is a form of imperialism.

• Colonialism is the control of one nation by “transplanted” people of another nation — often a geographically distant nation that has a different culture and dominant racial or ethnic group.

– Note: A classic example of colonialism is the control of India by Britain from the eighteenth century to 1947.

• Fascism: • A system of government that flourished in Europe from the 1920s to the

end of World War II. Germany under Adolf Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, and Spain under Franco were all fascist states.

• As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, wears a showy uniform, and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in Germany.

• Although both communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality.

• In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single charismatic leader (the “cult of personality”), which is the cornerstone of fascism.

• Whereas communists are considered left-wing, fascists are usually described as right-wing.

• Note: Today, the term fascist is used loosely to refer to military dictatorships, as well as governments or individuals that profess racism and that act in an arbitrary, high-handed manner.

• Communism• An economic and social system envisioned by

the nineteenth-century German scholar Karl Marx. In theory, under communism, all means of production are owned in common, rather than by individuals.

• In practice, a single authoritarian party controls both the political and economic systems. In the twentieth century, communism was associated with the economic and political systems of China and the Soviet Union and of the satellites of the Soviet Union.

• In 1949, Orwell published another masterwork, Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984 in later editions). This bleak vision of the world divided into three oppressive nations stirred up controversy among reviewers, who found this fictional future too despairing. In the novel, Orwell gave readers a glimpse into what would happen if the government controlled every detail of a person's life, down to their own private thoughts.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four proved to be another huge success for the author, but he had little time to enjoy it. By this time, Orwell was in the late stages of his battle with tuberculosis. He died on January 21, 1950, in a London hospital. He may have passed away all too soon, but his ideas and opinions have lived on through his work.

Surprisingly, Orwell was a socialist.

The reason he hated communism so much is because it was not pure socialism -- he

distrusted the leaders who lived in mansions while the common folk slaved in the fields.

Communism, he thought, was just another way for the elite to control the majority of peasants.

• Socialism:• An economic system in which the production and

distribution of goods are controlled substantially by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which cooperation rather than competition guides economic activity.

• There are many varieties of socialism. Some socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the government maintains the dominant influence over the economy; others insist on an abolition of private enterprise.

• All communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communists.

• Socialism, in Marxist theory, is the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Thanks in part to Animal Farm, much of the Western world finally realized the danger of communism. Soon a

Cold War began between the world's greatest superpowers- the Soviet Union

and the United States. In the end, America would prove that capitalism

and democracy could outlive a system of government-mandated equality.

Cold WarDefinition:Rivalry after World War II between the Soviet Union and its satellites and the democratic countries of the Western world, under the leadership of the United States.

A constant nonviolent state of hostility between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Cold War began shortly after World War II, with the rapid extension of Soviet influence over eastern Europe and North Korea. With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Cold War ended.

". . . remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him . . . All the habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal."

--Animal Farm, from Old Major's speech

It has been said that Animal Farm is a byproduct of

George Orwell's long-held hatred of

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is defined as: •

Domination by a government of all political, social, and economic activities in a nation.

• Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century.

• The term is applied both to fascist governments (fascism) and to many forms of communism.

Josef Stalin• After Lenin's death, in 1924, Stalin set out to destroy the old party leadership

and take total control. At first, he had people removed from power through bureaucratic shuffling and denunciations. Many were exiled abroad to Europe and the Americas, including presumed Lenin successor Leon Trotsky. However, further paranoia set in and Stalin soon conducted a vast reign of terror, having people arrested in the night and put before spectacular show trials. Potential rivals were accused of aligning with capitalist nations, convicted of being "enemies of the people" and summarily executed. The purges eventually extended beyond the party elite to local officials suspected of counterrevolutionary activities.

• In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin reversed the Bolshevik agrarian policy by seizing land given earlier to the peasants and organizing collective farms. This essentially reduced the peasants back to serfs, as they had been during the monarchy. Stalin believed that collectivism would accelerate food production, but the peasants resented losing their land and working for the state. Millions were killed in forced labor or starved during the ensuing famine. Stalin also set in motion rapid industrialization that initially achieved huge successes, but over time cost millions of lives and vast damage to the environment. Any resistance was met with swift and lethal response; millions of people were exiled to the labor camps of the Gulag or were executed.

Leon Trotsky• Communist Leon Trotsky helped ignite

the Russian Revolution of 1917, and built the Red Army afterward.

• As the Soviet government developed, he engaged in a power struggle against Joseph Stalin, which he lost, leading to his exile by Stalin, and, eventually, his murder by Soviet agents.

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS

1.Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.

2.Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

3.No animal shall wear clothes.4.No animal shall sleep in a bed.5.No animal shall drink alcohol.6.No animal shall kill any other animal.7.All animals are equal.

COMMANDMENTS FROM OLD MAJOR AND HOW THEY TIE INTO MAN’S CORRUPTION:

• No animal is ever to live in a house. (Caring more about possessions)

• No animal is ever to sleep in a bed. (Becoming lazy-spending too much time in bed sleeping instead of working-luxury)

• No animal is ever to wear clothes. (Pride in appearance)• No animal is ever to drink alcohol. (A Vice, Drinking to excess-

forgetting duties)• No animal is ever to smoke tobacco. (A Vice, Ruining health,

expensive habit)• No animal is ever to touch money. (Money corrupts)• No animal is ever to engage in trade. (Human Folly, profit- making)• No animal is ever to tyrannize his own kind. (Slavery)• No animal must ever kill any other animal. (Murder)• All animals are equal. (Competition is self-serving)

Look at the names of the characters. Why did Orwell use the names he did? How do the names fit the characters?

Examples:

• Mr. Jones could represent any man. Jones is a common a name as Smith. If he were named Mr. Edgewater, it would individualize him too much. All we know about Jones is that he drinks too much and sometimes is cruel to his animals.

• Napoleon is a regal name, one fit for an emperor, a tyrant.

• Snowball is white and represents a thing that melts in the sun or breaks up when it hits a solid object, such as Napoleon. Certainly the name shows no leadership.

• Squealer does just that. He spies for Napoleon and tells on the other animals.

• Moses, the crow, like Moses in the Bible, is there to lead the animals to the promised land of Sugarcandy Mountain.

• Boxer has great stamina, willpower, and strength, and does whatever he is told. He is not too intelligent, but he is loyal. Many human boxers could fit this description.