Dark Muse
01-09-2008, 04:08 PM
I just finnished reading Animal Farm and it was pretty good, particuarly after the 3rd chapter. When I first started reading I was a bit concenred at first as the begining of the book and the 1st chapter in particular, seemed as if Orwell just took the Communist Manifesto and put it into story form, there were parts of the book that seemed almost word for word from the Manifesto, and though I can understand why he set it up like this, it would be a bit wearisome of the whole book was just a rewrite of the Manifesto, but the story did in fact get much better along the way.
One of the things I could not help but to notice was the simillarites to 1984 so many of the same elments were incoperated into Animal Farm. In particular the way in which, once the pigs began to gain more power, they began rewriting history, or altering the rules, while convincing the other animals that such is the way it had always been from the start, and any was mistaken if they thought otherwise. The other thing was the conflict between the Pitchfield and Foxwood farms, and how Animal Farm always seemed to go back and forth between the two, while Napoloan convinved them they were always from the beginning with just one side or the other. This reminded me of the war in 1984 in which they were always changing sides and yet insisting it was the same enemey they faught all the time.
Though there were a couple of questions which were raised in my mind of a few things which somewaht confussed me or I did not fully understand within the book.
The first was, I did not completely understand why certain animals, had voluentarily made confessions of their so called crimes, after they already knew that the consequences for such would be death.
The other thing, if the pigs were all suppose to be so intelligent, then how come none of them ever tried to challenge Napolean? I would think if they were indeed so intelligent, they would start to grow ambitions of thier own and not be content to just follow and obey him, but they would start to have thier own ideas of want power for themselves. I would think they would be able to see the way there was growing unease among the other animals and rally them against Napoloean.
One of the things I could not help but to notice was the simillarites to 1984 so many of the same elments were incoperated into Animal Farm. In particular the way in which, once the pigs began to gain more power, they began rewriting history, or altering the rules, while convincing the other animals that such is the way it had always been from the start, and any was mistaken if they thought otherwise. The other thing was the conflict between the Pitchfield and Foxwood farms, and how Animal Farm always seemed to go back and forth between the two, while Napoloan convinved them they were always from the beginning with just one side or the other. This reminded me of the war in 1984 in which they were always changing sides and yet insisting it was the same enemey they faught all the time.
Though there were a couple of questions which were raised in my mind of a few things which somewaht confussed me or I did not fully understand within the book.
The first was, I did not completely understand why certain animals, had voluentarily made confessions of their so called crimes, after they already knew that the consequences for such would be death.
The other thing, if the pigs were all suppose to be so intelligent, then how come none of them ever tried to challenge Napolean? I would think if they were indeed so intelligent, they would start to grow ambitions of thier own and not be content to just follow and obey him, but they would start to have thier own ideas of want power for themselves. I would think they would be able to see the way there was growing unease among the other animals and rally them against Napoloean.