Bokrecension: Animal Farm av George Orwell

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

The author:
The author George Orwell, or really Eric Arthur Blair, was born in India 1903. His family belonged to the British middleclass. He died of tuberculosis in January the 21st 1950 at the age of 47.

The main characters:
 Mr Jones is the owner of the farm in the beginning of the book. He’s a human who is not so nice to his animals. He forgets to feed them and let’s them work too hard. He and his wife are living in a big house and they are often having parties.
 Old Major is an old pig who dies very early in the book. But before that he tells the other animals about a dream he had about freedom and happiness for the rest of their lives. It was he who convinced the other animals to take over the farm. He had an incredible respect among the animals, because when he spoke, everybody was sitting quietly and listen.
 Napoleon is a pig. In the beginning he’s friend with everybody and he is really fighting for everybody’s welfare. But he is a traitor and after a while in the book he takes control and by force making all the animals listen to him and do as he says.
 Snowball is also a pig. In the beginning he is in the leading too, with Napoleon. He seems much nicer than Napoleon and seems to care for the animal’s best. But after one of the fights with the humans, he is getting chased away by Napoleon and is not allowed to return.
 Squealer is another pig which you don’t get to know until you got into the book a bit. He’s becoming Napoleon’s closest partner and helps him take the leadership by convincing the other animals that everything Napoleon says is right.
 The sheep are not in such high authority. They’re obeying the pigs and singing songs that they’ve learned from squealer about Napoleon’s good will. They appear as kind of stupid.
 Clover is an old, bad seeing horse with a bad memory. She has a good hart and seems to be friend with everybody on the farm. She doesn’t always agree with Napoleon but she doesn’t have the courage to tell him.
 Benjamin is an old depressed donkey. He has been at the farm for a very long time. He doesn’t at all agree with Napoleon about anything.
 Boxer is a young, hard working horse who’s always trying to do better. His motto is: I can work more. In the end of the book he gets sick and the pigs send him away to the slaughterer.

The set:
I think that the book is set somewhere in England, probably around 1950. I would call it a drama/comedy/fiction/fable-story but in the book it says that it is just a fiction-story. I couldn’t really see who the narrator was, but it was an all-seeing person.

Plot:
The story starts of with a speech from the oldest and wisest pig on the farm that we get to know as Old Major. He tells the other animals that they must make a rebellion against the humans and take over the farm. Not until then, they will be able to live long and happy lives. He said that it had come to him in a dream. Old Major dies not so long after that, but the animals decide to follow his advice to start a rebellion against the humans and chase away them for ever. One night when Mr Jones (the owner of the farm) is too drunk to remember to feed his animals they decide to go to attack. They brake into the store-shed and start to feed themselves. When Mr Jones sees this, he’s furious. He runs out with his gun attempting to stop them. The animal’s attack him and chase him away from the farm. The farm now belongs to them and the pigs take the control, especially two of them; Napoleon and Snowball. They’re learning the other animals to read and write, but they are also putting them into really hard work. The other animals, after a while, starts to question the pigs when they are starting to overfeed themselves and not saving anything for the others. They also put themselves in a higher position than everyone else. Even though the farm now belongs to the animals and stays “free”, most animals do not feel any different from when the farmer was there. It is clear that the pigs, especially Napoleon, do not fight for the freedom of the animals but only for their own best. The pigs then start to sleep in the human’s beds and walk on their hind legs. The other animals don’t know what to think or do.

My opinion:
I thought that it was a really good book that I could read several times. I had already heard about the book before I read it and it sounded like a good book. It contains everything that a good book should; it has humours, sorrow, drama and action. All that put together makes a really good book that you could “go into” and forget about everything else. The book could easily be read by anyone because it’s easy to understand. But I don’t think that when Orwell wrote it, he just wanted to tell a story about animals taking over a farm. I think his mind was set on writing a book about power, and how people (who are just like animals) can do anything to get it. I could easily connect this story to, for example; the time before the Second World War in Germany....