35. Animal Farm Orwell

Again drifting back into the depths of my mind to write this one up... the challenge has been fun, the blogging part I'm pretty rubbish at!

I remember reading 1984 when I was younger, and loving the idea of future society and how it might change. It made me question stupid things in todays world like why there are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour. I spend hours pondering the idea of a state controlled media, and how a government really could control everything we know in life if they wanted to, and whether or not that is something that we should be scared about - I don't ever remember coming to a satisfactory answer though!

So it was with a lot of hope that I would have a similar experience when I picked up Animal Farm.

The problem was that I knew quite a lot about it already. It's very difficult to pick this book up completely ignorant and to not know all the messages, allegories and morals that are contained.

The story itself is quite a nice allegory of the Soviet system, and is the sort of message that is very easy to put across - particularly to kids in class. When you first explain communism to them, it also amazes me how many of them extol the system as a really good idea, and it is only after you talk them through the problems of ensuring equality that they start to understand. Animal Farm manages that in a very simple and concise way.

I am also a big fan (as I have probably mentioned previously, several times) of stories that show just how easy it is for society to be swept into and along with something that in the cold light of day they would never ever support. Society generally follows a mob mentality, and in Animal Farm Orwell depicts that beautifully as deviancy is frowned upon it is much easier to just follow and conform.

My only slight issue was in how the book ended. Not so much the pigs becoming more human like, but the idea of squinting through the window and being unsure of what they were seeing, but then perhaps that is just my desire for a happy ending!!