“All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others."

Orwell's story becomes, as they say, funny and sad at the same time, and that is why, probably, this work is even brilliant to some extent. How is it possible to fit so many topics into such a small number of pages that are often complex or completely inaccessible for discussion in everyday life, but which do not become less important?
It turns out that it is possible.

Deep inside, I am still indignant at why works like this story are not included in the school curriculum, but instead teachers spend weeks hammering into children’s heads, for example, the need for compassion for someone who is incapable of anything more than , in order to shove your whining (“Tosca”, Chekhov) and endless stories about love in the face of everyone you meet, which often cause boredom and rejection in children, and also become a kind of stigma for the rest of their lives for the entire diversity of literature in general as such.
Intellectually, of course, I understand the reasons, or at least I have the courage to assume, but, God, if I had a choice, read what was offered to me at school and because of which I once even had a period when reading made me want to spit ( thanks to “Russian Women” and “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by Nekrasov, who forced me to read, almost shoving the book in my face during the summer holidays), or to read and analyze in detail “Animal Farm” ten times in a row, I would choose the second and I wouldn’t regret my choice for a minute.

Of course, sometimes you can find worthy works in our program (from what I had to read, and I read everything that I was told to read at school, I counted at most about ten works out of the entire infinite set). But some of the works are not only not worth attention or very outdated, they are simply useless or completely incomprehensible to the reader, and especially the age to whom they are offered.
But this, of course, is my personal opinion, which has little to do with the topic of this review.

Orwell's Animal Farm is an animal-based satire of famous events that took place between 1917 and (approximately) 1950 in the Soviet Union. However, despite the fact that recognizing and comparing the images of the characters in the story with the political figures of those times seemed to me quite an interesting entertainment, I will not go into discussions about the history of the USSR, because the plot of the work is ideally suited to the situation of almost any country during a particular revolution , and also after it. An example is Idi Amin's military coup in Uganda in 1971, which established one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes that Africa has ever seen.

So the plot of this work is familiar even to those who have not read it: if not from history, then at least from films or computer games in the dystopian genre. In general, probably every modern person has experienced something similar at least once.

First, the once bright land declines, and its population naturally begins to resent such darkness. A strong leader appears who can add fuel to the fire and talk about “jelly banks”, “rainbow meadows”, “pink clouds” and the like. All this encourages the crowd, and at the apex of the crisis, a revolution (often armed) of the masses begins. The population fights against pre-existing injustice, gets used to an imaginary freedom, in which almost all benefits in unheard-of volumes become temporarily available to them, and does not notice how it falls into its own hook, placing the same depraved and cunning dictator on a pedestal of honor. , dressed in a mask of complacency itself.
But in fact, nothing ever changes. But the propaganda apparatus is working with a bang (and for some reason, right now I needed to remember about the totalitarian regime of the third dynasty with the cheerful name of Ur in Mesopotamia, which I once read about).
I don’t even know how appropriate the line “we wanted it to be better, but it turned out as always” is appropriate here, but, on the other hand, attempts also do not go unnoticed... but we started to rejoice early.

Images of characters in the head appear purely associatively. Indeed, in fact, few people do not know that pigs are indeed overly gluttonous and not stupid, and cats are lazy and independent; or have not heard the expressions “plow like a horse”, “stubborn donkey” and “dog’s devotion”.
Some livestock animals control the “state” apparatus, some burn out at work (more likely in their slavery), some stupidly follow the voice of politicians, not paying attention to amendments that contradict the original plan, introduced only to please themselves politicians. Some cattle don’t care about this at all - they want to show off their bows and ribbons and not think about anything, while one animal gets the right to kill another, having come up with the simplest reason, and the former hero, repeatedly awarded with various titles, becomes state enemy number one.
The characters and their characters are easily distinguishable; one only has to find out their belonging to one species or another and their name, which from the very first pages makes it easier to understand the story and frees the text from the digressions that burden it. Napoleon, Squealer, Major... well, you get the idea.

I won’t say that I’m a fan of dystopias. In any case, I don’t read them so often that it would allow me to call myself that way. And often representatives of this genre, with rare differences, are like two peas in a pod and do not at all make the reader want to return to them after a while.
However, I would probably prefer to return to “Animal Farm” more than once in the future. A wonderful piece of work and truly brilliant satire.

(8. A book that a Riedian will recommend to you.)

George Orwell- pseudonym of Erik Blair - born June 25, 1903, in Matihari (Bengal). His father, a British colonial official, held a minor post in the Indian Customs Department. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, received a personal scholarship in 1917 and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma. In 1927, returning home on vacation, he decided to resign and take up writing.

Orwell's early - and not only documentary - books are largely autobiographical. Having worked as a scullery in Paris and a hop picker in Kent, and wandering through English villages, Orwell received material for his first book, A Dog's Life in Paris and London ( Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933). "Days in Burma" ( Burmese Days, 1934) largely reflected the eastern period of his life. Like the author, the hero of the book “Let the Aspidistra Bloom” ( Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936) works as an assistant to a second-hand bookseller, and the heroine of the novel “The Priest’s Daughter” ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) teaches in run-down private schools. In 1936, the Left Book Club sent Orwell to the north of England to study the life of the unemployed in working-class neighborhoods. The immediate result of this trip was the angry non-fiction book The Road to Wigan Pier ( The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), where Orwell, to the displeasure of his employers, criticized English socialism. It was also on this trip that he acquired an enduring interest in works of popular culture, reflected in his now classic essays, "The Art of Donald McGill" ( The Art of Donald McGill) and Weeklies for Boys ( Boys' Weeklies).

The civil war that broke out in Spain caused a second crisis in Orwell's life. Always acting in accordance with his convictions, Orwell went to Spain as a journalist, but immediately upon arriving in Barcelona he joined the partisan detachment of the Marxist workers' party POUM, fought on the Aragonese and Teruel fronts, and was seriously wounded. In May 1937 he took part in the Battle of Barcelona on the side of the POUM and anarchists against the communists. Pursued by the communist government's secret police, Orwell fled Spain. In his account of the trenches of the civil war - “In Memory of Catalonia” ( Homage to Catalonia, 1939) - it reveals the intentions of the Stalinists to seize power in Spain. The Spanish impressions stayed with Orwell throughout his life. In the last pre-war novel, “For a Breath of Fresh Air” ( Coming Up for Air, 1940) he denounces the erosion of values ​​and norms in the modern world.

Orwell believed that real prose should be “transparent as glass,” and he himself wrote extremely clearly. Examples of what he considered the main virtues of prose can be seen in his essay "The Killing of an Elephant" ( Shooting an Elephant; rus. translation 1989) and especially in the essay “Politics and the English Language” ( Politics and the English Language), where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic sloppiness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his writing duty as defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945 he wrote Animal Farm, which made him famous ( Animal Farm) - a satire on the Russian revolution and the collapse of the hopes it generated, in the form of a parable telling about how animals began to rule on one farm. His last book was the novel "1984" ( Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949), a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger. Orwell died in London on January 21, 1950.

George Orwell is the pseudonym of an English writer and publicist. Real name: Eric Arthur Blair. Born on June 25, 1903 in India in the family of a British sales agent. Orwell attended St. Cyprian. In 1917 he received a personal scholarship and attended Eton College until 1921. He lived in the UK and other European countries, where he did odd jobs and began writing. He served in the colonial police in Burma for five years, which he described in the story “Days in Burma” in 1934.

Orwell's most famous works are the story Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel 1984 (1949). In the story, the writer showed the degeneration of revolutionary principles. This is an allegory of the 1917 revolution and subsequent events in Russia. The novel "1984" became a continuation of "Animal Farm". Orwell depicted a possible future society as a totalitarian hierarchical system. Such a society is based on physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear, hatred, and denunciation. In this book, the infamous “Big Brother is Watching You” was first heard, and the terms “doublethink”, “thought crime”, “newspeak”, “orthodoxy” were introduced.

Orwell wrote many stories, essays, articles, memoirs, and poems of a socially critical and cultural nature. The complete 20-volume collected works have been published in Great Britain. The writer's works have been translated into 60 languages. Orwell was awarded the Prometheus Prize, which is awarded for exploring the possibilities of the future of humanity. Orwell introduced the term “Cold War” into political language.

George Orwell

PART ONE

It was a bright, cold April day and the clock was striking thirteen. Winston Smith, pressing his chin to his chest and shivering from the disgusting wind, quickly slid through the glass doors of the House of Victory, but still a whirlwind of sand and dust managed to rush in with him.

The entrance smelled of boiled cabbage and old rugs. A colored poster was pinned to the wall opposite the entrance, perhaps too large for this place. It showed only a huge, more than a meter wide, face of a man of about forty-five with rough but attractive features and a thick black mustache. Winston headed straight for the stairs. It was not worth wasting time calling the elevator - even in the best of times it rarely worked, and now, in accordance with the savings program, the electricity was completely turned off during the day, since preparations for Hate Week had already begun. Winston had to climb seven flights of stairs. He walked slowly and rested several times: he was already thirty-nine years old, and besides, he had a varicose ulcer on his right leg. And from the walls of each landing, right opposite the elevator door, a huge face looked at him.

It was one of those images where the eyes are specially drawn so that their gaze follows you all the time. “BIG BROTHER SEEES YOU,” read the poster underneath. When he entered his apartment, a velvety voice read out a summary of figures that had something to do with the smelting of iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plate mounted in the right wall of the room, reminiscent of a dim mirror. Winston turned the dial - the voice sounded quieter, but the words were still distinguishable. This device (it was called a “monitor”) could be muted, but it could not be turned off at all. Winston approached the window - a small, frail figure, whose thinness was further emphasized by the blue uniform of a Party member; he had very fair hair and a naturally ruddy face, whose skin was roughened by bad soap, dull razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

The world outside, even through the closed window, seemed cold. Below, on the street, the wind swirled dust and scraps of paper, and although the sun shone brightly in the blue sky, everything looked colorless, except for the posters posted everywhere. The face with the black mustache was everywhere. There was one on the front of the house opposite. “BIG BROTHER SEEES YOU,” the sign said, as dark eyes peered deep into Winston. Below, another poster flapped in the wind, with a corner torn off, now revealing and then covering a single word: “ANGSOC.” In the distance, a helicopter hovered over the rooftops. From time to time he would dive and hover for a moment like a huge blue fly, and then curve upward again. It was a police patrol looking through the windows. However, patrols did not play a role. Only the Thought Police played a role.

Behind Winston, the voice from the monitor was still muttering something about cast iron and overfulfillment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The monitor was both a receiver and a transmitter that picked up any sound except a very low whisper. Moreover, as long as Winston remained in the field of view of the monitor, he could not only be heard, but also seen. Of course, you can never know for sure whether you are being watched now or not. One can only guess how often and in what order the Thought Police connect to a particular apartment. It is quite possible that they are watching everyone all the time. In any case, they could connect to your line at any time. And I had to live knowing that someone heard every sound and someone was watching every movement, unless complete darkness prevented this. And people lived like this - out of habit, which had already become instinct.

Winston still had his back to the monitor. It was safer that way, although he knew well that his back could also incriminate him. About a kilometer above the bleak cluster of houses stood the huge white building of the Ministry of Truth, where he worked. And this, he thought with vague disgust, was London, the main city of the First Air Force Zone, the third most populous province of Oceania. He tried to remember his childhood, to remember whether this city had been like this before. Have these neighborhoods always been lined with crumbling houses built in the nineteenth century? Were their walls always supported by wooden beams, their windows covered with cardboard, their roofs covered with rusty iron, and the strange front garden fences leaning in different directions? Have there always been these bombed-out wastelands with piles of broken bricks, overgrown with fireweed, dust of plaster in the air? And this pathetic fungal mold of wooden shacks where bombs have cleared large spaces? Alas, he could not remember anything, nothing remained in his memory except for occasional bright, but obscure and unrelated pictures.

The Ministry of Truth, in Newspeak (Newspeak was the official language of Oceania. For more information about its structure and etymology, see the Appendix) - Minitruth, was sharply different from the surrounding houses. Its huge pyramidal structure of sparkling concrete rose into the sky, terrace after terrace, for three hundred meters. From Winston's window one could read the three slogans of the Party beautifully written on the white facade:

WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS POWER.

They said that the Ministry of Truth had three thousand rooms above ground and the same number underground. In different parts of London there were three more buildings of approximately the same appearance and size. They suppressed everything, and from the roof of the House of Victory one could immediately see all four. The buildings belonged to four ministries, into which the entire government apparatus was divided. The Ministry of Truth was in charge of all information, entertainment, education and art. The Ministry of Peace dealt with the war. The Ministry of Love maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty was responsible for the economy. In Newspeak they were called: Mini-truth, Mini-world, Mini-love and Mini-much.

The Ministry of Love looked truly terrifying. There were no windows in this building. Winston never entered it, he never even came within half a kilometer of it. The building was entered only on official business, and then only through a labyrinth of barbed wire barriers, steel doors, and camouflaged machine gun nests. The streets leading to it were patrolled by gorilla-like guards in black uniforms armed with folding batons.

Winston turned around sharply, not forgetting to give his face an expression of complete optimism - this was always prudent to do while in the field of view of the monitor - crossed the room and entered the small kitchen. He sacrificed his lunch in the dining room, although he knew that there was nothing at home except a piece of black bread, which was better saved for breakfast. Winston pulled from the shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a simple white label: “VICTORY GIN.” The gin had a disgusting fusel smell, like Chinese rice vodka. He poured almost a whole cup, got ready and downed the contents, like swallowing medicine.

Eric Arthur Blair was born in the city of Motihari, India, whose territory at that time was a British colony. His father held one of the ordinary positions in the Opium Department of the colony administration, and his mother was the only daughter of a tea merchant from Burma. While still a child, Eric, along with his mother and older sister, went to England, where the boy received his education - first at Eastbourne Primary School, and then at the prestigious Eton College, where he studied on a special scholarship. After graduating from college in 1921, the young man devoted himself to service in the Burma Police for five years (1922 - 1927), but dissatisfaction with imperial rule led to his resignation. This period in the life of Eric Blair, who very soon took the pseudonym George Orwell, is marked by one of his most famous novels, Days in Burma, which was published in 1936 under a pseudonym.

After Burma, young and free, he went to Europe, where he eked out a living from one odd job to another, and upon returning home he firmly decided to become a writer. During this time, Orwell wrote an equally impressive novel, Pounds of Dashing in Paris and London, which tells the story of his life in two of Europe's largest cities. This creation consisted of two parts, each of which described the brightest moments of his life in each of the capitals.

Beginning of a writing career

In 1936, Orwell, already a married man at that time, went with his wife to Spain, where the civil war was in full swing. After spending about a year in the combat zone, he returned to the UK involuntarily - a wound to the throat by a fascist sniper required treatment and further removal from hostilities. While in Spain, Orwell fought in the ranks of the militia formed by the anti-Stalinist communist party POUM, a Marxist organization that existed in Spain since the early 1930s. An entire book is dedicated to this period in the writer’s life - “In Honor of Catalonia” (1937), in which he talks in detail about his days at the front.

However, British publishers did not appreciate the book and subjected it to severe censorship - Orwell had to “cut out” any statements that spoke of terror and complete lawlessness that was happening in the republican country. The editor-in-chief was adamant - in the conditions of fascist aggression, it was under no circumstances possible to cast even the slightest shadow on socialism, and even more so on the abode of this phenomenon - the USSR. The book finally saw the world in 1938, but was received rather coldly - the number of copies sold during the year did not exceed 50 pieces. This war made Orwell an avid opponent of communism, deciding to join the ranks of the English socialists.

civil position

Orwell's writings from early 1936 onward, as he himself admitted in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), had anti-totalitarian overtones and extolled democratic socialism. In the eyes of the writer, the Soviet Union was one complete disappointment, and the revolution that took place in the Land of the Soviets, in his opinion, not only did not bring to power a classless society as previously promised by the Bolsheviks, but on the contrary - even more ruthless and unprincipled people were “at the helm” than before. Orwell, without hiding his hatred, spoke about the USSR, and considered Stalin to be the real embodiment of evil.

When news of Germany's attack on the USSR became known in 1941, Orwell could not have imagined that very soon Churchill and Stalin would become allies. At this time, the writer kept a war diary, the entries in which tell of his indignation, and then surprise himself: “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I would have the opportunity to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!”, Well, I did!” - he wrote after a while.

Orwell sincerely hoped that as a result of the war, socialists would come to power in Great Britain, and ideological socialists, and not formal ones, as often happened. However, this did not happen. The events unfolding in the writer’s homeland and in the world as a whole depressed Orwell, and the constant growth of the influence of the Soviet Union even drove him into a protracted depression. The writer was finally crippled by the death of his wife, who was his ideological inspirer and closest person. However, life went on and he had to put up with it.

The author's main works

George Orwell was one of the few authors of that time who not only did not sing odes to the Soviet Union, but also tried to describe in all colors the horror of the Soviet system. Orwell’s main “opponent” in this conventional competition of ideologies was Hewlett Johnson, who received the nickname “Red Abbot” in his native England - in every work he praised Stalin, expressing his admiration for the country that was subordinate to him in every possible way. Orwell still managed to win, albeit formally, in this unequal battle, but, unfortunately, posthumously.

The book Animal Farm, written by the writer between November 1943 and February 1944, was an obvious satire on the Soviet Union, which at that time was still an ally of Great Britain. No publishing house undertook to publish this work. Everything changed with the beginning of the Cold War - Orwell's satire was finally appreciated. The book, which most saw as a satire on the Soviet Union, was largely a satire on the West itself. Orwell did not have to see the huge success and millions of copies of sales of his book - the recognition was already posthumous.

The Cold War changed the lives of many, especially those who supported the policies and system of the Soviet Union - now they either completely disappeared from the radar or changed their position to the opposite. Orwell’s previously written but unpublished novel “1984” came in very handy, which was later called “the canonical anti-communist work”, “the Cold War manifesto” and many other epithets, which were undoubtedly recognition of Orwell’s writing talent.

"Animal Farm" and "1984" are dystopian films written by one of the greatest publicists and writers in history. Telling mainly about the horrors and consequences of totalitarianism, they, fortunately, were not prophetic, but it is simply impossible to deny the fact that at the present time they are acquiring a completely new sound.

Personal life

In 1936, George Orwell married Elin O'Shaughnessy, with whom they went through many trials, including the Spanish War. Over the many years of marriage, the couple never had their own children, and only in 1944 did they adopt a one-month-old boy, who was named Richard. However, very soon the joy gave way to great grief - on March 29, 1945, during the operation, Elin passed away. Orwell suffered the loss of his wife painfully; for a certain time he even became a hermit, settling on an almost deserted island on the coast of Scotland. It was during this difficult time that the writer completed the novel “1984”.

A year before his death, in 1949, Orwell married a second time to a girl named Sonia Bronel, who was 15 years younger than him. Sonya at that time worked as an assistant editor at Horizon magazine. However, the marriage lasted only three months - on January 21, 1950, the writer died in the ward of a London hospital from tuberculosis. Shortly before this, his creation “1984” saw the world.

• Orwell is actually the originator of the term "Cold War", often used in the political sphere to this day.
• Despite the clearly expressed anti-totalitarian position expressed by the writer in every work, he was for some time suspected of having connections with the communists.
• The Soviet slogan, heard by Orwell at one time from the lips of the communists, “Give a five-year plan in four years!” was used in the novel "1984" in the form of the famous formula "twice two equals five." The phrase once again ridiculed the Soviet regime.
• In the post-war period, George Orwell hosted a program on the BBC, which touched on a wide variety of topics - from political to social.