Just Finished Reading George Orwell's Animal Farm

George Orwell's short novel Animal Farm is one of those stories that I've heard so much about over the years that I never felt any pressing need to read it...yet, I did just that the other day. Set on a farm in England, the animals in it decide to rebel against the cruel rule of Farmer Jones and set up a self-governing farm...renamed Animal Farm from its original title of Manor Farm...using the principles of "animalism".  The pigs have set themselves up as the intellectual force behind the movement and, led by Snowball and Napoleon, have come up with a list of seven rules for the animals that they have put up on the barn wall.  As the story goes on, there is a power struggle between the two porcine leaders and one, using a forged alliance with the dogs, emerges as an autocratic ruler over the animals.  One by one, the rules are amended as the pigs gradually assume the very roles of the humans they had displaced.  Finally, at the end, the other animals find themselves even worse off under the pigs, who have even thrown away the rules, along with the name Animal Farm.

Animal Farm is obviously an allegory to communism and the rule of Josef Stalin over the Soviet Union.  Originally promoted as a worker's revolution to give them the rights they deserved, the clique running the communists made themselves "more equal" than the masses they were supposedly there to serve...eventually the people were even more severely subjugated than they were under autocratic czar rule.

Although intended to frame Stalinism in satirical terms, Animal Farm can apply to any social/political/religious movement with benign stated intentions but whose leaders and organizers set themselves apart from those for whose causes they claim to be fighting...while in reality manipulating and taking advantage of them.  Since I seem to have an innate suspicion of people setting themselves up as authorities with the power of command, this story deeply resonates with me...