Episode 38
Animal Farm
Hello and welcome to episode 38 of Jay Wont darts podcast, where I share my favourite books, kind of like a tall white vegan Oprah.
My intros were from No Agenda episode 117 and the song Optimistic by Radiohead, its one of the many songs that refference Animal Farm, I'll play another for the outro.
George Orwell is known most for his story Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I prefer his earlier work Animal Farm. Animal Farm is a wonderful book mostly aimed at the Soviet Union and Communism, basically all the main characters are based on real life political figures such as Lenin, Karl Marx and Stalin. Other Farms represent the US and UK, and several collective flocks of animals represent social classes of people.
In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm he explained how escaping the communist purges in Spain taught him quote, "how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries." This motivated Orwell to expose and strongly condemn what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original socialist ideals.
In that preface Orwell also described what gave him the idea of setting the book on a farm
" ...I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat."
Thats a great quote that also relates to animals rights.
One night, Major, an elderly pig on Manor Farm has a strange dream, that the animals could better themselves, and live freely instead of being repressed by humans such as Mr Jones, their farmer. Jones often gets drunk and is not attentive to matters of his farm. The animals begin a revolution and rise up against their oppressor, the humans. And yet, by the end of the book we see things have not worked out so well for all the animals. I'll read part of Major's speech.
There are two main quotes best remembered from Animal Farm.
The shortest and easiest to remember is
"Four legs good, two legs bad"
Another is the original commandments given out by Major,
THE [ORIGINAL] 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 created equal.
The last commandment is morphed by the end of the story into
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.
I love the ending of the book, the way the pigs change is amazing, I really dont want to spoil the ending for you, its reason enough for you to read this short story.
In Animal Farm, the pigs are generally treated as the most intelligent animals, and probably the sheep are the most dim witted, the sheep act as cheer leaders, mindlessly shouting slogans taught to them by the ruling politician. The pigs start off as being rule by Napoleon and Snowball, Napoleon is more concerned about himself, while Snowball thinks up grand plans to better all animals. Napoleon gathers his own secret police, who on his command drive out Snowball, I love how the secret police come into being, I never expected it, and yet its so logical. I wont spoil that surprise for you.
Napoleon takes control as a dictator, he has the other remaining pigs work for him, there are a few named pigs such as Squealer who acts as second in ...