Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Animal Farm

I just finished reading Animal Farm by George Orwell.
This is a quite amusing commentary on politics and power and corruption. Its not a long read and well worth the small effort required. Essentially, the animals on a farm kick out their human overlords and take over the running of the farm themselves. It turns out the pigs are the most intelligent, and end up managing the running of the farm. The corruption and politics of the pigs and the way they take advantage of the other animals becomes more and more extreme.
This has some clear parallels with Nineteen Eighty Four too. The pigs rewrite history and convince the others that things happened differently to how they remember, and rewrite their '7 Commandments' subtly in their favour and so on. There's also the enforcement of correct thinking and abuse of power.
There is plenty of depth if you want to go into the details of the allegory if you are interested, but the main point is pretty obvious really.

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