Animal Farm

I read this back in high school and it has never left me. I decided to revisit it this year, nearly two decades after I originally read it. It is still just as much of a powerful read as it was back then. 

The animals of Manor Farm gather one night in the company of an old pig, Old Major, to hear about the dream he has had. He tells them he dreamt of a time where humans were no longer in charge and animals worked for themselves rather than humans. He tells them that he knows a rebellion is coming, though he is unsure when he knows that they will be successful in their rebellion. Old Major dies and this leaves two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, in charge of leading the animals towards the rebellion. This comes much sooner than anyone could have anticipated and the animals successfully rebel and chase the humans off the farm. They write a list of seven commandments that the animals are to follow in order to save them from walking in the footsteps of humans, these commandments end with “All animals are equal”. The pigs try to teach the other animals to read but are unsuccessful with a lot of them and a lot of them can’t remember the seven commandments off by heart, so they are shortened to “Four legs good, two legs bad”. The animals are happy for a time, but after a while the humans try to take the farm back and then Snowball is chased from the farm and accused of being a traitor. After this, things become less equal for the rest of the animals compared to the pigs but they still continue on, questioning the pigs very little about the divide. 

This book is a thinly veiled look at communism and what happened in the USSR during their rebellion with Stalin and Lenin. It is an enjoyable read, but with a political undercurrent. I enjoyed it just as much as I did in school and can say that I didn’t forget a lot of it as it all came flooding back as I was reading it.