Animal Farm

I was pondering over something and the name George Orwell somehow popped into my mind. Anyone of you out there knows who he is? George Orwell was a famous writer. His actual name is Eric Arthur Blair and he was born in India. But what's so special about him? Well, I am not too sure. He wrote quite a few books, which included Animal Farm (written sometime towards the end of World War II - 1945 when he was working as a literary editor for the BBC). Apparently the book Animal Farm made Orwell prosperous. His other world wide success was "Nineteen Eighty Four", which was a political novel about a omnipresent State enforcing perfect conformity among members of a totalitarian Party through indoctrination, propanganda, fear, and ruthless punishment. The novel introduced the concepts of the ever-present, all-seeing Big Brother, the ubiquitous thought police, and the bureaucrats' and politicians' language Newspeak. The book sounds interesting.

I have not read "Nineteen Eighty Four". Perhaps I should, but I have read the Animal Farm as part of my Literature subject in secondary school. Animal Farm is a satire on Stalinism and the Russian Revolution. After realising their desire for freedom, the animals at the farm chased the farmer off his property and took control of the farm. George Orwell used animals to comment on human society and the events of the Russian Revolution and the years from 1917 to 1943. As a literature book, it was a little confusing for a boy with poor english like me to understand what George Orwell was talking about. What is a satire? Who are the Russians and what is Communism? My teacher took pains to explain what the whole novel was all about and slowly the book made some sense.

The sudden thought of this book Animal Farm brought to my mind a phrase which was written by George Orwell (Actually I think someone else came up with this phrase but he used it in his book). I believe most of you would have heard of this famous political quotation.

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

I am not sure how well you can relate to this phrase but I somehow have this strange feeling that this is very real. While my teacher taught me that Animal Farm was talking about communism and the people involved in it, I feel that George Orwell was also trying to warn us that with power comes money; money leads to greed and greed leads to corruption and when you have absolute power, you will be corrupt absolutely! In Animal Farm, the animals (the pigs in this case) portrayed the people who managed to get into power and who exploited the power to secure luxurious lives at the expense of the poor and weak. How true???!!! Hmmm.....I wonder if this is already happening or has been happening for a long time? Ponder Ponder.