Animal Farm Book Review

The first book I ever finished in ONE sitting. Finally. My sleeping schedule is ruined now, but still. I'm proud of the accomplishment. It's also the first classic I'm reviewing. I hadn't really planned on reading Animal Farm, but since I suddenly wasn't going to proceed reading the Remnant Chronicles, I needed a new book. I'd seen this in my public library (the English YA section is getting bigger every time I come there, which is often) and thought I might as well try it out. So here we are.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

I really enjoyed this book. As you must know, it's based off the stuff that went down during and after the Russian Revolution, and there were plenty of parallels with that. What interested me more, though, is the look at our own modern-day society through this book that was written like, fifty years ago. The fact that Orwell wrote this book with Soviet Russia in his mind, does not mean it can't be applied to this day.

For those of you who do not know Animal Farm:

Animal Farm is a story about animals who are mistreated by their owners and revolt against them. It follows the historical events of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union up to WWII, only with animals. It's been praised for its great symbolism and literary value.

This was a little bit of a different experience than the genre I normally read, because it has this super simplistic plot and animal characters. With YA, it's all about the actual story line and meaning and personal character development. This satire novel mainly focuses on what it all means and represents, rather than on a complicated story.

I'm writing this review way too late, so let's just go over some little points:

Things I liked:

- How every character represents a type of person in revolution and government. You have the people who have the wits to do something about it but don't until it's too late. Then there are the people who work themselves to death for their beliefs without ever truly realizing they were wrong, and those who loyally drown out all resistance.

- The way we work through the seven commandments over the course of the book.

- The animals start to contribute their own lies to the pigs' lies without even thinking about it.

- The animals don't eventually hunger for revolution. This is a big point Orwell makes which other authors don't acknowledge. I don't know if you ever see the reports about North Korea where they interview the people on the streets, but especially city people don't seem to doubt their government. In the Hunger Games, no one buys the Capitol's bullsh!t and revolution might make a beautiful story about war, but also seems like a given. IRL that's not the case. Even food shortages are blamed on the evil non-revolutionary countries who have to be defeated. Those people are not aware in the slightest that they are being fed lies. That's the thing with oppression: it only works if you combine it with isolation.
- All the historical parallels like the broken promises to and of both other farms.

Things I thought could have been better:

- The obvious choice of picking a pig as an enemy. In Orwell's time, this didn't apply as strongly as it does nowadays, but I still want to address it. Pop culture is a very important part of our society, and let's face it: pop culture greatly consists of the pretty part of our population. Now I'm not meaning to say that attractive people are a greater danger to our society or that I don't love pop culture. I don't believe in creepy conspiracy theories. All I'm saying is that highly value those things that provide entertainment. Those things are often ruled by the more beautiful part of our population. A pig isn't a pleasant creature to look at. The greater threats are often those that don't go around looking like threats.
- I wish there would be a bit more explanation of some characters' symbolism.