Book Review: Animal Farm

This book is written by George Orwell in 1945. The story is talking about the rise and fall of the "Animalism" revolution. It's an excellent story that allude the actual polity situation of USSR.

In one farm, pigs led all the animals to defeat the farmers who treat them as slaves, and finally the pigs became the slaveholders instead of the farmers. The author described the story of the animal farm to show his Anti-Utopianism conception.

The author wrote this story as an allegory. But differently from the traditional allegory, this book doesn't simply tell a truth, it is more like a symbol of all the Totalitarianism in the world. To describe the serous polity with the animals' temperament and activities, it makes the whole story more ironical and more understandable for the readers.

You can see symbolism through the whole story. Each character is the symbol of one kind of people. For example, the pig, Napoleon,the leader of the animal farm, is just like the exploiters. And the horse, Boxer, is the honest supporter of the "Animalism".It works hard, believe every single word of its leader, but finally it is betrayed by its own belief. Boxer represents the kind people who believes the revolution theory. You can also see metaphor in the book. The windmill project is the symbol of the construction result of the USSR, and each war between human and animals alludes the violence in the history. All these elements make the animal farm just like the reprint of the revolution in 20th century. Through this book, people can understand the revolution more deeply.

In this book, George Orwell predicts the fall of socialism. And maybe more importantly, he uses art to tell that whatever in which way, the totalitarian rule is always the obstacle of the basic social need.

This is really an excellent allegory with meaningful truth. Both in writing skills and ideological content, George Orwell did pretty well in this book. Although maybe the author can do more on the depiction on the characters to make the image more full, I recommend this book to everybody.