One of my goals this year is to read one “classic” a month. In January I’d read Push (which I started in December so I wasn’t sure I should count that), and started on Jane Eyre. But as the end of the month approached, it was clear I wouldn’t get through the book. It has over 400 pages of a font that has to be smaller than 6pt.  So I had to scramble for another book if I was to make my goal.

Luckily I found an old copy of Animal Farm by George Orwell. At only 128 pages, it was just the right length.

This book is the reason I don’t like literature. There is no resolution. The bad pig wins. It essentially says that animals (people) can’t handle power and will become horrible beings to keep it. Isn’t that what Lord of the Flies was about?

It starts out fine and interesting. It made me think of Charlotte’s Web or the movie Babe. But eventually, the animals stage a revolt to get a better quality of life, and get rid of the drunken farmer Jones. For a time they are able to run the farm and live in harmony. They have rules like no animals can live in the house or sleep in beds, or walk to two feet (birds have wings which give them 4 limbs). The simple sheep chant “Two legs are bad, four legs are good” (which is what made me think of Babe with the Mu Ram U sheep).

But human (or pig) nature sets in and when things can’t be resolved democratically, lies, deception, and violence are used to take control. Snowball is ousted, Napoleon takes over. And like every bad dictator he’s a hypocrite (he moves into the house and sleeps in the bed).  He changes the rules to fit his “new order”.  For example, the pigs can sleep in beds, just not with human sheets.

The animals are now working harder and have less food than with farmer Jones, but the propaganda tells them that’s not true. And when it comes time for old Boxer (the hardest working and most loyal of the group) to retire, he’s sent to the glue factory.

I’m sure there are all sorts of lessons to be learned from this book, but in the end I found it depressing. If I want to know about evils of politics or human nature, I can watch the news. And therein is what make’s Orwell’s Animal Farm a classic…it has a timeless story.