Book Review: Animal Farm by George Orwell

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Reading Animal Farm hit me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I’d gone in thinking, “Okay, it’s a short book about talking animals, a political allegory everyone gets assigned in school.” But once I started, it didn’t feel like a school assignment at all. It felt like being slapped awake, page after page, watching hope turn sour, watching promises rot. And it unsettled me in the best way.

At first, I’ll admit, I laughed. The animals rising up, overthrowing the farmer — there was something almost triumphant, even funny about the idea. I caught myself rooting for them, nodding along to their speeches, thinking about how good it felt to finally have the underdogs take control of their own lives. But it didn’t take long for that excitement to sour into something heavier.

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The most memorable thing to me was the fact that ideals became manipulated very fast. The commandments that were painted on the barn, they seemed so firm at first they seemed like the new world was being made. But when I saw them begin to change, letter by letter, word by word I felt that chill in my stomach. It brought to mind real life situations when the rules change without anyone being able to say when it changed, when the truth is distorted so gradually that when you finish notice, it is already too late.

The pigs — oh, the pigs. They were almost too real. Napoleon especially. This is what he did, beginning small working behind the scenes, pushing things his way, and gradually, bit by bit having a little more until he was the undisputed leader. I despised him yet could not read enough of him.

And what hurt more was the amount of ease with which the other animals fell into line. It was not their stupidity to be loyal, precisely, it was their faith, it was their fatigue, it was their desperate hope that things were not to be as bad as they had been. I believe that is what Orwell managed to be so excruciatingly close to capturing not only the corruption of power, but also the frailty of hope.

Boxer broke me. The man to that horse — I will work harder — it it was a kick in the belly. I have known such as Boxer, such as the people who are able to pack a whole system on their shoulders with the hope that one day loyalty and hard work will be paid off. And where his tale to-tell to-end? God. I had that scene as a bruise. One of those was that I had to set the book aside and just breathe because it was not only a horse. It was all workers, all believers, all individuals who sacrificed everything and received nothing.

But between the tragedy I could not manage not to laugh. There was this acute stinging humour with which Orwell described the animals imitating humans. It was ridiculous, bordering on being cartoonish, when the pigs figured out how to walk on two legs, and they carried whips. But it also was horrifying, and that combination only made it sharper. I knew it was absurd and then I laughed at the absurdities when I saw how near they were to the truth.

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When I went to the end, with the animals looking through the window and being unable to identify the pigs with the humans any longer, I simply sat there and stared at the page. It was a sort of ending that does not leave you with a neat ending, only a gaping hole in your stomach. Since it was not merely that the revolution was bad. What that meant was that it ended up becoming the thing it was attempting to eradicate. And is not that the brutal cycle we watch, time and time again, history, politics, even in our little lives?

What was in my mind and not just its wit was Animal Farm. The fact that it was human-like was how it felt despite being about animals. It is all about how we desire justice, how power distorts that desire and how silently we can resign when you see that possibly things just will never be the same. It is a book that I was angry to read but I felt aches too. I wanted those animals to do well because in my heart I wanted them to do well. I wanted the dream to last.

Closing the book, I felt both defeated and awake. Defeated because the story shows you how fragile hope can be. Awake because it reminded me not to swallow every “truth” I’m fed, not to trust systems blindly, not to believe that hard work alone will protect me. It’s the kind of book that whispers long after you finish it: be careful who you follow, and be careful what you’re willing to forget.

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The last three images was gotten from web:

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