Hundred Book Challenge #11: "Animal Farm" by George Orwell

So it's been a few weeks hasn't it. Well, I got a bit of an excuse in that we moved house. Not a huge excuse because we've been in the house for a bit now but still an excuse.

I haven't taken a break from reading however. I'm a bit behind so let's just jump into it shall we?

“Animal Farm” written by George Orwell long before everyone hated the Soviet Communists so a bit of a prophecy fable.

I read it in elementary school and I assume a lot of people did as this is a prime story to teach kids about allegorical stories while extolling the evils of Communism.

All these years later and I still loved reading this little thing. There isn't much joy in the book and that may be a reason I loved it so much as a kid. It taught me that not all stories have a happy ending or relateable, good characters and sometimes that's awesome. It's maybe my first literary fiction story.

I had two huge thoughts as I read this as an adult.

First, there is no way a book like this could be published today. The wiles of the publishing industry would toss it aside not due to content or story but because it's written so skerwonky. It's all “tell not show” which flies in the face of what we assume to be good writing. It's incredibly fast paced and the characters get little to no story arcs. Maybe this is my sour grapes for being rejected over and over by publishers and agents but I'd be willing to bet good spendin' money that if someone submitted “Animal Farm” to an agent or publisher who was somehow unfamiliar with it, they wouldn't even give it the time to write a rejection.

Second, this story has way larger implications above and beyond Communism. Yes, it's pretty much a one to one analogy for Soviet Communism and it's fun to align nearly every character with a real world counterpart which Orwell totally intended. Still, in good ol' capitalism democracy things still work. I speak particularly of how the pigs change the rules as it fits them and then convince their party members the rule had always been changed.

Look at how vitriolic people treat the President of the United States, but only if it's a member of the particular party they are a part of. This is how it works: If your guy is president and you hear people being all nasty to them you say “How dare you! Even if you don't respect the man respect the office! If you don't support the president you don't support America!” If your guy isn't president you are the one being all nasty while the opposite party feeds you the same lines.

Talk radio, TV news, political pundits and politicians themselves are all the same with this. It's all a show to keep people from knowing too much about whats going on and it's a shame.

Don't worry, there is only one more George Orwell novel on the list, “1984” so I won't be so negative about everything.

But seriously. Politics absolutely sucks and you shouldn't trust anybody who has the audacity to believe they can lead or represent everyone in their jurisdiction.