I am currently learning an interesting novel by George Orwell titled "Animal Farm". Animal Farm is a fable and at the same time an allegory as it has a deeper meaning too. Ultimately, the moral of the story is Lord Acton's famous quote: "Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The entire novel closely parallels the Russian Revolution in 1917. The main characters of the novel are Napoleon, who represents Joseph Stalin, Squealer, who represents propaganda, Snowball, who represents Leon Trotsky, Boxer, who represents the workers, just to name a few (there are many characters in the book which parallel certain people in the Revolution).
Here is a summary of the character traits of several main characters. Napoleon is self-centered, scheming and cruel, often using fear and terror to manipulate the animals once it was made known that he had his own private army of dogs.
Snowball is also to some extent self centered, as seen from his agreeing to reserving the apples and milk only for the pigs. He is also inventive, thinking about the plans for the windmill and creating many animal committees.
Squealer, the mouthpiece of the pigs, is sly and can manipulate the animals by using his gift of the gab to convince the animals that what he says is the truth.
Boxer represents the proletariat. He is overly sacrificial and very hardworking. He is also strong and brave. However, his downside is his ignorance and blind loyalty towards Napoleon.
That's a quick introduction to Animal Farm's characters for you.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThis is Rayson. Your animal farm post is nice. But do we have to post on them? Nevermind, I am not posting. Now on to the topic, I feel that the characters are really well ananlysed. However, maybe you can add in their parallels to the Soviet Union more? It would surely provide a greater understanding of the novel and the history as well. By the way, your first music is really nice. Where did you get it from? So pleasent, it makes me feel so relaxed. But seriously, I am a "noob" at music. Ok, I guess I shall end here, but I will sure lcome back o your blog. Bye.
Hi Ernest,
ReplyDeleteI like your analysis of Animal Farm. Personally, I think the brief summary was nice, but basically, I think you should have focused more on what have you understood from this theme and what can you do to ensure that George Orwell's life had not been building up to write a book simply to be read and that's all. No offence,because you really do analyse deeply, but a deeper level of personal analysis would have been fantastic. Ultimately, no offence, and I'm not doing this blog post, so I don't really have the authority to say how you should have gone about doing it. Good job done!
Cheers,
Darrel