Animal Farm by George Orwell
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Web ID: 15623805A Must-Read!
Manor Farm, nestled in the English countryside, is filled with hungry and overworked animals. One day the animals decided to band together to overthrow their tyrannical farmer and take over the farm. They renamed it Animal Farm and intended to build a utopia for the animals. Sadly the plan changes over time creating unexpected results. This book should be read by all! It is really a satire, the animals and farms symbolizing failed governments that tried to create a utopia for its populace. This is a valuable book!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A brilliant book
The book “Animal farm” by George Orwell was written in 1945 and is a great book that is still relevant to this day. This book really makes you think. And as the book goes on, the plot thickens making you think more. But I would recommend it. This book talks about animals rebelling in hope of having a better life. Because before they rebelled they were working for their owner who basically ruled them. The animals view the human as a villain and selfish. But the animals eventually got rid of the owner after he did not feed them for several days. They created their own rules they all had to follow. But there is a deeper meaning to this book: it is not actually about animals on a farm. It just uses the setting of the barn to represent what happened in the Russian Revolution. This book is great for readers that will understand the deeper meaning. But this book might be challenging for younger readers who would not understand the language or what's going on. To fully understand the book you would have to have prior knowledge about the Russian Revolution. Without this knowledge you can still read the book but it might make it harder to understand. Knowing about the Russian Revolution would just make your reading experience better. So I would recommend doing a little research before reading the book. With the theme being the desire for power this book explains what the desire for power can do. It shows how being power hunger can lead to bad things. It gives an example of this when the pigs in the story want more power than the other animals because they believe they are the smartest animal. And these pigs actually represent the Russian government and leaders during this time. But the pigs' greediness leads to the conditions on the farm becoming worse for all of the animals. If you want a book that is comical, sad and chilling all at the same time this is the perfect book. With the book being only 108 pages this book makes you feel many different emotions. Like in the beginning of the book I felt hopeful the animals would escape and be happy. But as the book went on my mood changed, suddenly I wasn’t so hopeful the animals would escape. By using a third person point of view the book shows what the animals are thinking as well as some of the other characters. But overall this is a truly a good book that George Orwell has written very well.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Amazing book for your next read.
George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is a novel that is based off of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and depicts what happens when you let power get to your head. This is initiated by Old Major, the eldest and wisest pig on the farm, he had a dream about a revolution that would take place on their farm, the Manor Farm which was owned by their master Mr. Jones, a heavy drinker and also a farmer. All of the animals listened close to Old Major, especially three pigs up in the very front. Their names were Napoleon, Snowball, and Squealer. Napoleon and Snowball are the two main characters of the story and do a good job of showing what happens when you let your hunger for power take over and try to be your sole ruler. This is seen in Napoleon especially as he is the most desperate out of the two. Orwell does an amazing job of portraying the corrupt and wicked path that Napoleon takes in his rise to power by going behind people's backs and lying such as some politicians did in their race to power during the Russian Revolution. Animal Farm is such a great novel not only because of the quick pace and amazing writing but also because of how applicable it is to our world and how timeless it is. Orwell wrote this novel in 1945 which is seventy-nine years ago and it is still so relevant to our society. This book made me feel very wary of other people, especially those in power who would do anything to stay at the top even if that means losing who they are and what they stand for. This is seen in our world today just as it was in Animal Farm and in the Russian Revolution where politicians would lie and cheat just to gain power, eventually their vision is so clouded by this greed that they are taken down and then the cycle repeats itself again and again. This book reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 in the sense that it warns the readers to stay vigilant about someone or the government trying the exploit you like in Fahrenheit 451 or how the pigs were exploiting the other animals on the farm just as the leaders during the Russian Revolution were exploiting the same people who put them into power, the general populous. This book is great and gets better the more times you go back and reread it. Orwell did a fantastic job portraying the different leaders of the Russian Revolution such as Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in a way that it was easy to understand their flaws and what they were doing in order to gain power. I would highly recommend this book to someone as there is a lot to learn and take away from this book.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A Required Read
George Orwell's novel "Animal Farm" takes you on a perspective-changing and thought-inducing journey. The characters used in this book mixed with the storytelling and plot lead to a challenging yet involved read that I recommend picking up. The story of Animal Farm starts on a farm and shows the animals involved in this rebellion. The speech given by Major was a bold and exciting way of beginning the story, and hearing the opinions of the animals themselves is a translucent and realistic way of starting such a controversial topic. With this book heavily relating to people in power, it was refreshing to be told the opinions of the animals before their reign rather than the warped version of their reality later on in their rebellion. The characters were written with such attention to detail and clarity that you understand their point of view while keeping your humane morals. Orwell has perfected the skill of showing who he is as a writer and completely involving you in characters in such a way that you don't know whose side to be on. Reading this book for the first time is an eye-opening experience that only gets more real the more times you read it over again. It's relevance to the modern world only gets stronger and the demand for a realistic story in our lives is as high as it's ever been. While this book is now almost 80 years old, it only gets more realistic and is something that every person should read at least once in their lives to keep themselves grounded and in this unfortunate reality. This book has often come across as a shock to many people, but it is a necessary piece of literature that should be praised in today's society. I recommend this book heavily and think there's something in it for everyone.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Retrospective & prescient genius
There’s not much to add to the reams of brilliant commentary and analysis that this powerful little novel has generated since its publication nearly 80 years ago. It’s as relevant today as it was in 1945. Perhaps the most chilling fable/allegory ever written.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime
I enjoyed this when I first read it and enjoyed it even more when I was older and had a fuller understanding of the book. So glad I picked this one up again.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Highly recommend, conflicting, and true events.
Animal Farm is a riveting fiction novel published by the famous George Orwell, who is also the writer for 1984. It is based off of the violent Russian revolution where the communists, who supported the common workers overthrew the aristocracy. Animal Farm ties close to this with Old Major (based off of Lenin) is the spark of the animals overthrowing the mistreating farmers. Even with this animal eutopia, problems arise when Napoleon (based off of Stalin) gets jealous of the Snowball (based off of Trotsky) popularity and soon, internal distrust and tyranny is what brings the emotion and suspense of the novel. The characters each have their own quirks and ideas and different perspectives on the changing place of power. The language is what brings the book out in the first place. The first being the battle between the animals and the farmers, which set the stage for the new animal rulers to take place. Though conflict amongst the animals continued, the conflict had resolved to Napoleon seizing power and establishing the new "manor farm". With the animals, who had worked tirelessly to create this eutopia, had no choice and were brainwashed into believing this was the right thing. Which desensitized them to long labor. The setting is on a farm, where there isn't much people except for neighboring farms, instead of factory, which really gives the reader the feeling that this is where animals should run free while being trapped by these farmers in pens and fences. This motivates the animals to take back what is there's and create a world where humans are gone and animals are the rulers of the world. This does not fall on popular categories like dramas or mysteries, but a unique genre of political fiction in which isn't real, but sows the seeds of political ideologies of socialism and Marxism.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Short and to the point classic
Surprisingly this was a classic that I never got around to reading when I was young. I like that it was on the shorter side because it was a quick and to the point read for me. Some classics are overly wordy. My copy had footnotes which was very helpful since I'm not well versed in the history that Orwell was satirizing. I think this is a good cautious tale in that we should know (and learn) from history and we should be careful in giving power of our lives to others.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com