George Orwell's Animal Farm
George Orwell was chiefly interested in justice and equality. He was a deeply pessimistic man who had powers of imagination which few of his contemporaries dreamed one man could have. Orwell's character and writing style was so deep that qualities that were and still are manifest in his work, did not reveal themselves in his life (Scott-Kilvert 273). In his short life, Orwell distinguished himself as a novelist, journalist, essayist, literary critic, and political polemicist. In his writings, Orwell used a personalized blend of moral commitment and social commentary to distinguish himself as a major spokesman for his generation (Beacham 1084). Animal Farm was one of the first real attempts to use a beast fable to satirize communism. The novel is quoted to be a struggle about farm animals that have driven out their human exploiter, to create a free and equal community. In doing this, Animal Farm takes the form of a mast ingeniously worked-out recapitulation of the history of Soviet Russia from 1917 up to the Teheran Conference. George Orwell uses the events of the Russian in his political satire Animal Farm to express the main theme, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
George Orwell passionately believed in the power of language for good and for ill. He believed that to support the right use of language and to give a voice to otherwise "inarticulate longings of humanity" was the artist's responsibility (Magill 1151). Orwell developed his own "Orwellian dialect or language which presents experience and then argues from it (Bloom 2129). The language of Animal Farm is Orwell's highest literary achievement precisely because it is appropriate to that particular story and because he told the truth is a straight forward common-sense way that separated him and his morals from most of the people of the eighteenth century. This is true throughout Animal Farm as he directly shows how corrupt man and society really is. How they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their efforts were rewarded, for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had hoped... Boxer and Clover would harness themselves to the cutter or the horse-rake (no bits or reins were needed in these days, of course) and tramp steadily round and round the field with a pig walking behind and calling out "Gee up, comrade!" (Orwell 35). Animal Farm is an allegorical beast fable that stems from an artistic tradition attributed to Aesop. A beast fable is most often designed to satirize human follies as well as provide moral instruction. In a well written beast fable, such as Animal Farm, the author must never allow the animals to be simply beasts. If this happens, the piece then becomes a nonsatirical children's story that seems like a fairy tale rather than a serious satire about mankind and his faults. Animal Farm shows Orwell's ability to maintain a delicate, satiric balance that keeps his readers conscious simultaneously of the human traits satirized and of the animals as animals (Williams 107). But the style, it is said rightly, is the man. And in that crystalline prose which Orwell developed so that reality could always show through its transparency, lies perhaps the greatest and certainly the most durable achievement of a good and angry man who sought for the truth because he knew that only in its air would freedom and justice serve (Williams 176).
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Approximate Word count = 1813
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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