Explanation

With a new introduction by Professor John Sutherland, this edition takes a fresh look at one of the great works of the twentieth century. Animal Farm is a moral animal fable written to highlight the weakness of humankind, and satirise the rule of Stalin, whose rise through revolution ended in totalitarianism. Peppered with slogans such as 'All Animals Are Equal', Orwell undermines the dark treachery of the pigs with a simple economy of style as, open-eyed and naive, the other animals allow themselves to be outmanoeuvred. By the end of the book the pigs are as corrupt and arrogant as the humans they replace. For many, the book was a wider allegory of human behaviour, a lament; but for others it was a call to action that foreshadowed the Cold War, where differing world views would attempt to adopt Orwell's great work for their own purpose. AUTHOR: George Orwell, the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Bengal, India, in 1903. He was educated at Eton, became a policeman in Burma but suffered and studied poverty. His great works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, are a product of his hatred of totalitarianism. His legacy of writing and political thought is much admired today. 3 illustrations

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quotes (23)
Writer

George Orwell

Language

English

ISBN

9781839642395

Number of pages

320

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.