FURTHER READING
Read the articles about George Orwell's life and political views and the analysis of his novel Animal Farm.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
Orwell was a British journalist and author, who wrote two of the most famous novels of the 20th century 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. He has proved to be one of the twentieth century’s most influential and thought-provoking writers. His relatively small numbers of books have created intense literary and political criticism. Orwell was a socialist, but at the same time he did not fit into any neat ideology. At times, he exasperated the more doctrinaire left-wingers with his enthusiasm for taking opposing views. He was foremost a political writer, but for Orwell his object was not to promote a certain point of view, but to arrive at the truth; exposing the hypocrisy and injustice prevalent in society.
Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of a British colonial civil servant. The family moved to England in 1907, and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. After he left Eton, Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of success as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs. Several years of poverty followed. He worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant. He described his experiences in his first book, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', published in 1933. He took the name George Orwell, shortly before its publication. This was followed by his first novel, 'Burmese Days', in 1934.
An anarchist in the late 1920s, by the 1930s he had begun to consider himself a socialist. In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in 'The Road to Wigan Pier' (1937). Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalists and was wounded. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist. 'Homage to Catalonia' is his account of the civil war. He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit.
He spent six months in Morocco and there wrote 'Coming Up for Air'. During the Second World Was he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943.
In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. By now he was a prolific journalist, writing articles, reviews and books.
As literary editor of Tribune he contributed a regular page of political and literary commentary, and he also wrote for the Observer and later for the Manchester Evening News.
In 1945, Orwell's 'Animal Farm ' - his unique political allegory - was published. A political fable set in a farmyard but based on Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution, it made Orwell's name and ensured he was financially comfortable for the first time in his life. 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was published four years later. Set in an imaginary totalitarian future, the book made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases - such as 'Big Brother is watching you', 'newspeak' and 'doublethink' - entering popular use. But Orwell's health was deteriorating and he died of tuberculosis in London on 21 January 1950, at the age of only 46.
A few days before, Desmond McCarthy had sent him a message of greeting in which he wrote: 'You have made an indelible mark on English Literature... you are among the few memorable writers of your generation.'
The socialism of George Orwell
George Orwell was a fascinating figure and brilliant writer. He was an idealist, who is best known for his work in warning of the dangers of totalitarianism (whatever its political form). This can be seen in the two classics 1984, and Animal Farm. Orwell was also a committed socialist who sought to promote a more egalitarian and fairer society.
“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
George Orwell, “Why I write” p. 394
Firstly, George Orwell was definitely a democratic socialist. He stated this consistently throughout his life – from the mid 1920s to his death in 1950. It is true that he wrote a compelling account warning of the dangers of totalitarian state. But, Orwell always maintained that just because you severely criticised Soviet-style Communism didn’t make you any less a socialist. In fact, socialism as Orwell understood it, stood for all the values – democracy, liberty, equality – that Soviet Communism rejected. Orwell believed that only a truly democratic Socialist regime would support liberty.
“And the only regime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a socialist regime. If Fascism triumphs I am finished as a writer — that is to say, finished in my only effective capacity. That of itself would be a sufficient reason for joining a socialist party.”
George Orwell, “Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party”
Homage to Catalonia
Orwell detested Soviet-style Communism – a belief strengthened when he ended up fighting Soviet-backed Communists during the Spanish civil war – Orwell went to Spain to fight against Fascism and for the Republican movement. As a member of the ILP, he joined a fraternal Spanish party – POUM – a small Marxist/Anarchist/Socialist grouping that had strong utopian Socialist ideals. Orwell loved their utopian Socialism.
“Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me. For the Spanish militias, while they lasted, were a sort of microcosm of a classless society. In that community where no one was on the make, where there was a shortage of everything but no privilege and no bootlicking, one got, perhaps, a crude forecast of what the opening stages of socialism might be like. And, after all, instead of disillusioning me it deeply attracted me. The effect was to make my desire to see socialism established much more actual than it had been before.”
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
But, Stalin wanted to crush all left-wing parties who were not the Communist party; this led to a civil war amongst the Republican movement in Spain. Orwell got caught up in this and it made him really disgusted with Stalin and the Communist party.
This experience of fighting alongside socialist idealists and against Stalinist-backed Communist party, only strengthened his belief in democratic socialism.
Down and Out in Paris and London
Orwell had a privileged upbringing – he studied at Eton College, along with many future members of the British establishment. After school, he got a job in the Burmese civil service. But he came to reject his class privileges and also grew to detest the British Empire. In Down and Out in Paris and London and Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell wanted to experience the difficult life that working class people experienced. These experiences in Paris, London and Wigan made Orwell very sympathetic to the cause of the working class, and Orwell believed it was socialism that was the fairest way to help create a more equal society.
“For perhaps ten years past I have had some grasp of the real nature of capitalist society. I have seen British imperialism at work in Burma, and I have seen something of the effects of poverty and unemployment in Britain…. One has got to be actively a Socialist, not merely sympathetic to Socialism, or one plays into the hands of our always-active enemies.”
George Orwell, “Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party”
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegory on revolutions which fail their ideals. It is clearly an indictment of the Russian Revolution. Orwell made no secret of the fact that he detested what Stalin was doing in Russia. Orwell was scathing of left-wing intellectuals (like George Bernard Shaw) who thought Soviet Russia was a Socialist paradise. Orwell lamented that Communists in Britain were too liable to excuse Stalin’s crimes and paint a picture of Russia which was not reality.
To Orwell, Soviet Russia was a failing of democratic Socialist ideals. Stalin had merely replaced one dictatorship (old Tsars) with another more murderous dictatorship.
Independent Labour Party
George Orwell was a member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The ILP were one of the founding forces of the British Socialist and Labour movement. Their roots were strongly influenced by Christian Socialism and the Fabian movement. Key figures in the party included John Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and James Maxton.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, many people equate Socialism with Soviet Communism. They are unaware that Socialist ideals have nothing to do with Stalin’s policies. Orwell saw Stalin and Hitler as pursuing essentially the same aim of creating a totalitarian state. Orwell wrote against totalitarianism and passionately for a democratic and fair Socialist society in Britain.
Animal Farm (1945)
(by Ronald Carter, Professor of Modern English Language in the School of English Studies, University of Nottingham)
Where I lacked a political purpose, I wrote lifeless books.
George Orwell
It is sometimes difficult to know what kind of book Animal Farm is. The subtitle is 'A Fairy Story'. Certainly the events in the book are like those in some fairy stories, and those in traditional tales such as Aesop's Fables. Animals talk like humans and they perform actions that only humans can undertake. Yet unlike most fairy stories the book does not have a happy ending. It tells the story of a revolution which fails because its leaders become corrupted by power.
Animal Farm was planned from late 1930s, completed during the Second World War in 1943, and finally published in 1945. At times Orwell thought he would have to publish the book himself, as it was rejected by a number of leading British publishing houses. The main reason for its rejection was that it was definitely not seen as a simple fairy story, but rather as a political allegory specifically directed at events in the Soviet Union since the Russian Revolution of 1917 and particularly at the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin. During the Second World War the Soviet Union was an ally of Britain in the fight against Hitler and Fascism in Europe, and the orthodox view at that time was that Stalin and Soviet Communism should not be criticized, however indirectly.
However, Orwell was never one to be persuaded by orthodox views and his book can indeed be read as a precise attack on the failure, as he saw it, of the Russian Revolution. Animal Farm works as an allegory because the story is coherent on a number of levels: as a story involving the overthrow of the cruel and unjust human owners of Manor Farm and the government of the farm by the animals for the animals; at a deeper level of contemporary political significance, as a story of the Russian Revolution; and at a more general level, as a story about the relationship between power and corruption in human affairs.
Orwell took pains to relate the incidents in Animal Farm to actual historical events. For example, the speech by Major, the boar, at the beginning of the novel draws on the political and social ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin was greatly influenced by Marx (1818-83) and inspired the revolution of 1917, personally leading the attacks on the royal palaces in St Petersburg of Tsar Nicholas II. He did much to establish Communism, the belief that everyone is socially equal, as a political practice. One of the main principles of Communism is that property, wealth and work should be divided equally between all members of society. However, Lenin died only seven years after the Revolution, and Stalin and Trotsky competed with each other for influence over the direction of events.
In Animal Farm there are clear parallels with those historical events. Major outlines ideas and a vision of the future which are very close to those of Lenin; the animals later call the communists ideas 'Animalism'. Major dies soon after the beginning of the story and a rift occurs between Napoleon and Snowball, two of the pigs, about the best next steps. Napoleon achieves victory largely because of his use of the dogs to terrorize anyone who might agree with Snowball, and he eventually drives Snowball from Animal Farm (Manor Farm has been renamed by the animals) and into exile. Later in the novel Snowball is described as an enemy of Animalism, and Squealer, who is nearly always accompanied by the terrorizing dogs, is employed by Napoleon to depict Snowball in a bad light. Trotsky himself was eventually driven into permanent exile by Stalin in 1929 and his role in the Revolution was described very differently by the propaganda machine Stalin created.
As Stalin gained more power he silenced many who disagreed with him or who spoke out in opposition, and in the 1930s many Soviets were murdered or sent to labour camps. He developed a secret police force to control the country and began to set very high targets for agricultural and industrial production, causing many ordinary workers to suffer severe hardship and hunger. He also modified many of the basic principles of Communism by allowing privileges for leaders of the army and the secret police, and for many of his own supporters.
Again, there are parallels in Animal Farm. Napoleon orders working conditions and targets which are as hard and they were under Mr Jones, their former master. Certain animals, such as Boxer the cart-horse, work hard because they believe in the basic fairness of the principles of Animalism and want to earn a better life for all. But others, the pigs in particular, become administrators, working less hard by simply overseeing the work of the rest. The pigs become leaders of the other animals and obtain more advantages and privileges for themselves, using language cleverly in order to turn the new situation to their advantage. Gradually the key ideas of Animalism, which are expressed as the Seven Commandments of Animal Farm, are modified to suit the lives of the pigs and the positions of power they and the other leaders have secured rather than the lives of the majority of animals on Animal Farm. For example, the commandment No animal shall drink alcohol is changed to No animal shall drink alcohol to excess; and the commandment No animal shall kill any other animal is changed to No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.
Ironically, these new commandments allow the pigs to enjoy a lifestyle similar to that of Mr Jones, who at the beginning of the novel is constantly drunk and unable to manage his farm without extreme cruelty. A climate of terror is created similar to that in the Soviet Union of the 1930s under Stalin.
As the novel progresses Napoleon becomes more and more of a tyrant and dictator, controlling all the animals on the farm by force and managing their thoughts by every means, from clever uses of words to simple slogans which, when used for example by the sheep who blindly follow Napoleon, can drown out any opposition. Language is shown in the novel to be a way of manipulating reality, of concealing important truths and of turning black into white. In Chapter 7 a political poet, Minimus, whose main job seems to be to write poems of praise to Comrade Napoleon (the name Minimus reminds you of reducing things to a minimum), composes a new but uninspiring song to replace 'Beasts of England', the song with uplifting and visionary words sung by all the animals at the beginning of the novel. The old song is now finally forbidden on account of its 'subversive' references to a better life. The commandments Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy, and Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend, are reduced to a mindless chant: Four legs good, two legs bad.
At the end of the novel the absolute totalitarian power of Napoleon and his followers is reflected in the change of words in the commandment All animals are equal to a perverted version: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others, which removes any belief in the original communist principles of Animalism. In Orwell's later novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which totalitarianism is also satirized, an official language, 'Newspeak', is used by those in power to enforce narrow and unquestioning rules of behaviour.
The concluding pages of Animal Farm show a horrifying turn of events as Clover, who like Boxer represents ordinary, decent working people, looks through the window of the farmhouse and sees the pigs wearing clothes, drinking and smoking, doing deals with 'other humans' (Mr Pilkington), carrying whips to control other animals, and becoming indistinguishable from the humans they overthrew. Even the name of the farm reverts to Manor Farm.
George Orwell's main message is that the failure of social revolution often lies in the process itself, as the leaders of the revolution pursue their own interests rather than the interests of those they were meant to serve. Animal Farm is not only, as some have thought, an attack on Communism or on socialist values and principles. It is an attack on the ways in which ordinary people can be made to suffer and can become victims of leaders who are corrupted by power.
Though it has its origins in the 1930s Animal Farm is very much of the post-war era, opening up an important new development in the English novel which later writers were to find a valuable landmark. Animal Farm is a fairy story, it is an allegory of human behaviour, it has all the power of a myth and it is a political satire on totalitarianism. But it is also, perhaps less grandly but just as significantly, a realistic examination of the kinds of honesty and truth-telling which the modern world needed at that time. Orwell's novels of the 1930s were realistic, sometimes documentary, accounts of social life. Politically, they were characterized by an open-minded, liberal view of a wide range of people and social situations, including - in the novels The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London, for instance - first-hand accounts of the lives of the poor and destitute. But Animal Farm provides a different kind of realism. It offers an honest and realistic assessment of what it means to be a liberal, to have a social conscience, and to believe in the values of democratic socialism. It asks difficult questions about countries like the Soviet Union in which social revolutions have taken place. Above all, it inspired a generation of writers to criticize illusions and false expectations and to ask questions about the kind of world they wanted to inhabit.
Events in Europe since 1989, which have seen the break-up of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, have not reduced the power of Orwell's message. Orwell first became disillusioned with Communism when fighting in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-37, and wrote that 'every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it'. And in the preface to a Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, Orwell wrote: I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement.
FURTHER ACTIVITIES
After you have read the articles, comment on George Orwell's quotation " Where I lacked a political purpose, I wrote lifeless books ". How do you understand it? What was the purpose of Orwell's literary activities?
STUDY QUESTIONS
As you have finished reading the book Animal Farm, try to find the answers to the following questions:
1. How and why does the word "comrade" change in the course of the novel?
2. What is the significance throughout the novel of the Seven Commandments?
3. With reference to Animal Farm, discuss what you understand by the term "political allegory".
4. Why is the subtitle to Animal Farm "a Fairy Story"?
5. What happens to the sheep and cows in the novel? Go through the book finding references to these two animals. What do these animals represent?
6. To what extent do you think it can be said that Animal Farm is a book written "for democratic socialism"?
QUOTATIONS
Comment on the following quotations about revolutions. Do you consider revolutions positive or negative phenomena in the life of society?
Thomas Jefferson
- I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small degree of it.
- The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Benjamin Disraeli
- In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.
Fidel Castro
- A revolution is not a bed of roses... a revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.
Nikita Khrushchev
- Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
Mao Tse-Tung
- Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly
- Every Communist must grasp the truth: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
The Lord Acton
1. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
TRANSLATE INTO ENGLISH
Translate the sentences using the vocabulary you have learnt from the book:
1. Теперь наша военная мощь позволяет нам сорвать планы потенциальных террористов.
2. Я бы хотел воспользоваться этой возможностью и поздравить вас с избранием на этот высокий пост.
3. Я бы хотел выразить глубокое сочувствие народу вашей страны, который пострадал в результате недавнего извержения вулкана.
4. В заключение я хотел бы вновь подчеркнуть, что мы готовы продолжать сотрудничество с вами, чтобы способствовать миру на нашей планете.
5. Мы бы хотели, чтобы все соседствующие страны объединились ради общего дела и урегулировали данный конфликт.
6. Я бы хотел воспользоваться возможностью и поблагодарить вас за помощь в выполнении моих обязанностей.
7. Мы убеждены, что потребуются совместные усилия соседствующих стран, чтобы локализовать этот конфликт.
8. Я бы хотел выразить удовлетворение работой комитета под вашим руководством.
9. Ваши вооруженные повстанцы уже почти три года нарушают законы на границе между нашими государствами.
10. Пора положить конец насилию, пыткам и кровопролитию на территориях, оккупированных захватчиками.
11. Мы озабочены бушующим конфликтом на границе между этими соседствующими государствами и считаем, что пора начать процесс урегулирования.
12. Участники конфликта ведут сложные переговоры относительно сотрудничества этих стран в сфере торговли.
13. Мы должны создать механизм, чтобы контролировать выполнение государствами их обязательств.
14. Члены организации торжественно провозгласили свою решимость проявлять терпимость и жить в мире друг с другом как добрые соседи.
15. Осуществление этой программы предотвратит дальнейшие споры и трения.
16. Крах тоталитарного режима и появление демократических ценностей приведут к установлению мира и стабильности в регионе.
17. Наши совместные усилия не были тщетны: мы смогли сдержать бушующий конфликт в регионе и положить конец разногласиям.
18. Мы не позволим разжигать ненависть и призывать к насилию.
19. Мы осуждаем нарушение законов и принципов терпимости.
20. Некоторые государства лишают часть своего населения права на гражданство и ограничивают доступ к управлению государственными делами.
21. Настало время примирить эти государства, которые уже давно находятся в плохих отношениях.
22. Мы озабочены тем фактом, что сейчас появляются новые, более изощренные формы дискриминации.
23. Мы должны противостоять экстремизму и пытаться любой ценой сорвать планы потенциальных террористов, которые призывают прибегнуть к использованию силы.
24. Внутренние конфликты представляют угрозу всеобщей безопасности.
25. Мы твёрдо верим, что неприемлемо прибегать к войне; только мирное урегулирование разногласий и споров будет служить делу мира.
26. Этот вопрос является вопросом особой важности в преддверии выборов.
27. Сменявшие друг друга правительства долгое время скрывали правду и искажали факты.
28. Мы должны принять меры предосторожности, чтобы защитить население во время вооруженных конфликтов и боевых действий.
29. Источником серьезного беспокойства является идея, что существование гуманитарного кризиса в стране может обеспечить основания для вооруженного вторжения.
30. Мы не можем отказаться от принципов терпимости и считаем, что необходимо даровать больше прав и свобод национальным меньшинствам.