Pigs of Wrath

I am blogging to you today to inform you of the excitement I have witnessed in the first half of "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. As you may have realized by the timing of this post that the book is a rather short one, but it manages to not sacrifice anything to achieve this, and so far I am enjoying reading it.

As a stated in my first post this book follows a group of barnyard animals who are able to overthrow their human master and take complete control of the farm, all as an allegory to communist Russia. The book begins with the last speech of a dying pig, whom is greatly respected among the other animals. He tells them that man is the root of all unhappiness among the animals and that they should overthrow him. At the same time he also warns the animals to never become like man, and to engage in any human-like activities would be evil. Shortly following this elder pig's death, the animals stage a rebellion, and, to their great excitement, succeed. Shortly following this moral is high, and more crops are produced then ever before. Unfortunately, this doesn't last long. Without ruining anything for you, I'll say that the farm quickly turns to the darker days of the Soviet Empire.

In the beginning of the book one of the elder pig's main points was that all animals, and all should be treated as such. Unfortunately, some animals decide they are more equal than the others. Orwell writes, "The pigs did not actually work...With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume leadership " (30). Though the animals all worked rather hard to escape the leadership of the farmer, they are very quick to allow a new leader into power, one which ultimately ends up granting themselves special privileges and benefits. This is symbolic of how unstable communism is, especially on anything larger than a very small scale. I have been enjoying this quick read and cannot wait to finish it up tomorrow.