Summary

George Orwell’s animal farm is a thought experiment based on what I like to summarise as “What if Communism, but with pigs?”. Now, said pigs are actually the resident animals and we’re not talking about global politics (it’s a farm) but it sounds funnier than “Orwell’s animal farm gives its reader an insight into the failure of a system once meant to serve its people.” (An excerpt of my first attempt at a summary pre “very necessary style change”).

Orwell uses the pigs as representatives of the leaders of the USSR with Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotzky as the leader-pigs while the other animals embody the people of the working class. The developments of the paradise “Animal Farm”, which preaches about the equality of all animals and the fight against the oppressive force of the humans, mimic those of Sowjet Russia’s communist state and end in the oppression of the working class and the oppressors assimilating into mankind.

Now you might be asking yourself “Wait, but like how?” And the answer is both depressing and simple: A corrupt government and an indoctrinated nation. To reach this level of oppression, the “government” uses mind-boggling propaganda, intense fear mongering and uniting images of a common enemy. And because the point-of-view is through the eyes of the exploited animals, you, as the reader, just want to shake them awake sometimes and tell them to take a slightly closer look at the questionable power dynamics of their regime.

And congratulations! At this point you probably just realized what George Orwell wanted to accomplish with this story: to warn people that it is hard to find faults in a system you have been raised to support and believe in.

Review

Now, another thing you might have noticed at this point is that the novel isn’t really one that shines because of its complexity and depth which – incidentally – was exactly what bothered us while reading it. Orwell uses deliberately simple language to describe something that – if you’re at least remotely familiar with the history of the Soviet Union – might strike you as a little too familiar to really suck you into what is going on. Similarly, the animals seem to exhibit so little personality that every physicist would happily approximate them to be two-dimensional planes – something that might not be quite as helpful in the business of writing engaging literature as in science.

The most interesting aspects such as the villanization of former allies or a constant rewriting of history under the eyes of the people who should know better (because they were also there when said history was made) are sadly only secondary to the narrative. The main problem (or strength, depending on who you ask) is therefore Orwells choice of writing style. The so-called “fairy story” delivers quite exactly what you’d expect from this genre: a simplistic plot and (more or less) superficial takeaways in the morality department.

In the end our rather “meh” impression of the book likely boils down to disappointed high expectations we had because of the importance the book apparently holds in Orwell’s work. So all in all, if you really want to read some of his work (which arguably you should), maybe rather go for his other big success “1984” if you want something with a little more substance and potential to surprise you. If you’re instead looking for a quick, reasonably enjoyable history lesson/modern fairy tale go ahead and dive into “Animal farm” and be sure to tell us what you thought about it in the comments below!

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