Animal Farm

by George Orwell, John Sutherland (Introduction)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Even if you read this in school, it's time to read it again. Under the cuddly guise of an animal society, the encroaching totalitarian state is not lost on the pigs and the hamsters of the world. It's an unexpectedly cautionary tale that's widely banned for a reason.

With a new introduction by Professor John Sutherland, this edition takes a fresh look at one of the great works of the twentieth century.

Animal Farm is a moral animal fable written to highlight the weakness of humankind, and satirize the rule of Stalin, whose rise through revolution ended in totalitarianism. Peppered with slogans such as 'All Animals Are Equal', Orwell undermines the dark treachery of the pigs with a simple economy of style as, open-eyed and naive, the other animals allow themselves to be outmanoeuvred. By the end of the book the pigs are as corrupt and arrogant as the humans they replace.

For many, the book was a wider allegory of human behaviour, a lament; but for others it was a call to action that foreshadowed the Cold War, where differing world views would attempt to adopt Orwell's great work for their own purpose.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839642395
Publisher:	Flame Tree Publishing
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Series:	Essential Gothic, SF & Dark Fantasy
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

George Orwell, the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Bengal, India, in 1903. He was educated at Eton, became a policeman in Burma but suffered and studied poverty. His great works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, are a product of his hatred of totalitarianism. His legacy of writing and political thought is much admired today.

John Sutherland is the Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature, UCL, and has taught at the University of Edinburgh and the California Institute of Technology. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature he is the author of many books and articles including the well-received Orwell's Nose: A Pathological Biography in 2016 and Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography (2004).

Table of Contents

	How to study	v
	How to use this guide	ix
	Key to icons	x
	Background	1
	The story of Animal Farm	5
	Who's who?	10
	The main animal characters	10
	The other animals	19
	The humans	21
	Themes	23
	How to get to the top	23
	How to tell lies	25
	The uses of literacy	28
	Down with "isms"	29
	Language, style and structure	32
	Just words?	32
	Do we laugh?	33
	The structure of the novel	34
	The use of repetition	35
	Commentary	37
Chapter 138
Chapter 241
Chapter 344
Chapter 448
Chapter 551
Chapter 655
Chapter 758
Chapter 862
Chapter 966
Chapter 1071
	Topics for discussion and brainstorming	77
	How to get an "A" in English Literature	79
	The exam essay	80
	Model answer and essay plans	81
	Glossary of literary terms	84
	Index	86

Editorial Reviews

Absolutely first-rate...comparable to Voltaire and Swift. -- The New Yorker

Edmund Wilson

Animal Farm remains our great satire on the darker face of modern history.”—Malcolm Bradbury

“As lucid as glass and quite as sharp…[Animal Farm] has the double meaning, the sharp edge, and the lucidity of Swift.”—Atlantic Monthly

“A wise, compassionate, and illuminating fable for our times.”—The New York Times

“Orwell has worked out his theme with a simplicity, a wit, and a dryness that are close to La Fontaine and Gay, and has written in a prose so plain and spare, so admirably proportioned to his purpose, that Animal Farm even seems very creditable if we compare it with Voltaire and Swift.”—Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker

“Orwell’s satire here is amply broad, cleverly conceived, and delightfully written.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“The book for everyone and Everyman, its brightness undimmed after fifty years.”—Ruth Rendell

From the Publisher

George Orwell's classic satirical fable, first published in 1945, likens the Russian Revolution to events on a British farm. Led by pigs resembling Stalin and Trotsky, the animals overthrow their farmer overlord and seek to transform the farm into a collective for their mutual benefit. This is one of the key literary masterpieces in English indicting Russian communism--including THE LIGHT THAT FAILED, DARKNESS AT NOON, and Orwell's chilling 1984--that appeared before the end of the Cold War and are still worth reading today. Richard Matthews delivers the narrative in formal BBC-style tones and fully voices the characters. Perhaps because of this approach, there is nothing fabulous about the fable as he reads it. Otherwise, his is a serviceable, if undistinguished, reading. Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

JUN/JUL 03 - AudioFile