Animal Farm: Wider Readings

"Every now and then a sort of morphic resonance overtakes the world of literature. For reasons that are far from obvious, a number of books about (or around) the same broad subject will suddenly materialise in a way that itself transforms public interest and even shapes public sentiment. In 2023, for example, the name of a certain English radical began to appear in the literary pages – the subject of fresh biographies, critical reappraisals and even fictional reimaginings. Meanwhile, and completely out of the blue, my teenage son set aside the Game of Thrones series and began to read said radical’s greatest novel – a futuristic, dystopian satire on the prospects for English socialism, written in the middle of the twentieth century. Now he’s moving on to the essays. It’s all a bit mysterious. George Orwell is trending. But why? ... "

"The attachments we form shape our experience of the world and our understanding of who we are. 'Hell is other people', wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, his point being less about misanthropy and more about how entwined our self-perception is with the ways in which others perceive us. And alongside our personal relationships - from filial to friendship, from collegiate to romantic - sit the complex emotional connections we form with places, ideas and objects. How do we navigate these varying attachments, and what can they offer us when our lives are so mediated by technology? Can we break free of the tropes and traps associated with our most primal relationships: the social expectations of motherhood, the burdens of filial duty, the complexities of infidelity?"

"ow George Orwell would despair at today’s political discourse. His power-grabbing pigs in Animal Farm were an allegorical warning against Soviet-style dictatorship and propaganda. The more unequal the once egalitarian animal collective becomes, the more the ruling pig class rewrite their story ... "

"Literature has been the mirror of our society for ages. If one wants to know about the social balance of any society be it past or present, literature of that time can be a guide. We can know about all the highs and lows of a period with the type of literature that was in the making and what was making the waves during that period ... "

"Seventy-five years ago, almost to the day, a slim book replete with meaning was published, captivating the minds of readers worldwide. Even today, George Orwell’s Animal Farm remains relevant ... "

"Delve into the captivating world of Nigerian parallels, where the striking similarities between George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the challenges in contemporary governance unfold. Join us on a thought-provoking journey as we unravel the intricate web of power, corruption, and societal struggles, drawing uncanny parallels between the fictional farmyard and the complex landscape of Nigerian governance hardships ..."

"In his allegorical 1945 novella, “Animal Farm”, George Orwell has narrated a particular experience of animals, which has wider range of significance and profound relevance to human affairs. As a result, it has transcended space and time as it depicts a universal application in our contemporary world and beyond. On reading the first five chapters of Animal Farm, I have explored valuable insights from the text as the story unfolds ... "

"Orwell wrote "Animal Farm" as a fable, set in no particular place or time and used animals to clarify his moral lesson about totalitarianism. The narrator compares the power struggles in the novella to the Russian Revolution and contemporary leaders ... "

" ... The leaders of Animal Farm maintained thought control by obscuring the facts with smokescreens. In this way, the allegory to the Trump administration is dead on ... "

" ... In my work as a professor of philosophy and law, I’ve spent a lot of time studying Orwell’s writing. I think people were correct eight years ago to conclude that Orwell could provide insight into a Trump presidency ... "