Explanation

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RONALD CARTER SERIES EDITORS RONALD CARTER AND JOHN McRAE Penguin Student Editions have been specifically designed for readers who are studying a text in detail. They include a helpful introduction and explanatory notes, character sketches, a text summary, a chronology, a selection of questions and topics for discussion and analysis, as well as suggestions for further reading. Animal Farm is a simple tale of what happens when the animals on Mr Jones's farm get rid of the owner and take the farm over themselves. Their revolution begins with the best of intentions, but is undermined by corruption and greed, a chilling allegory of the events that took place when Communism was established.

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quotes (23)
Writer

George Orwell

Language

English

ISBN

9780140817690

Number of pages

128

Publisher

Penguin UK

Category

Animal Farm - George Orwell

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”
“Let’s face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.”
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
“Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.”
He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.
Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure!
Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than just ribbons?
Windmill or no windmill, life would go on as it had always gone on - that is, badly.
I have no wish to take life, not even human life.
Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey.
No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?
Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.
This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.
Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever.
There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word-- Man.
The Seven Commandments: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. No animal shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall drink alcohol. No animal shall kill any other animal. All animals are equal.
All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.
The distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.
His answer to every problem, every setback was “I will work harder!” —which he had adopted as his personal motto.
“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”
They had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.
If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.