Book Report: Animal Farm

For years, Your Humble Blogger has been griping to people, on those rare occasions when somebody brings up Animal Farm, that after all, at the end of the book, all Napoleon did was make the farm indistinguishable from the neighbor farms. That is, as bad as communism was (in this representation), it wasn’t worse than capitalism. To describe Animal Farm as an attack on communism, as such, seems false, then.

Except that it’s not true. George Orwell clearly states that Napoleon is a worse boss than his neighbors. It’s true that the neighbors admire Napoleon’s farming techniques, and look to become as bad as this erstwhile pig, but they are not, at least not yet, as awful to the proletariat. I was misremembering. When I was taught that Animal Farm was an attack on communism, it was ... not correct, exactly, but my point about how incorrect it was was not correct, either.

It was true that George Orwell didn’t like capitalism any more than he liked communism. He hated totalitarianism, and the capitalists were less successful totalitarians than the communists, not that he gives them any less credit for trying. The only thing he seems to like is the donkey. None of you have ever seen a dead donkey, right?

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.