In Animal Farm, Orwell, like Marx in many of writings, wrote for the common man whose place in society was of utmost importance but of little recognition. Orwell’s use of satire in the form of a “fairy story,? as he calls it on its title page, to get his point across shows his indignation for hard-core ideological doctrines whose purposes are to lead to the eventual destruction of a society. Another “general aim of Animal Farm as a satire is to offer itself as an example of temperate, responsible criticism ? in no way a rancorous verbal assault? (Twayne, 106). It is a generally sympathetic criticism of Marxism that offers to ease many of Marx’s statements about man, revolution, religion and society. It is a moderate Marxism whose definitive ideas are not really stated, but whose ideology surely exists throughout the novel.
Orwell’s Animalism shares many of the same beliefs as Marxism, but its political goals are not as extreme, its trust in revolution is not as confident and its (Orwell’s) forecast of the future is not as utopian as Marx’s. Successful Animalism is the political and social doctrine George Orwell waited years to write; often misconstrued and rarely considered more than a criticism of totalitarianism, its natural tendency to be compared with Marxism has been too often overlooked.
Selected Bibliography: Daniels, Robert V. Trotsky, Stalin and Socialism. Boulder: Westview Press. 1991. Lee, Robert A. “The Uses of Form: A Reading of Animal Farm,? Critical Essays on George Orwell, by Bernard Oldsley and Joseph Browne. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co. 1986. Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Preface. “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,? reprinted in Selected Works in Two Volumes, Volume One Moscow. 1962. —. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Pathfinder Press. 1987. —. On Britain. Moscow. 1962. Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, Inc. 1946. —. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, Volume Four. Orwell, Sonia and Ian Angus, eds. London: Secker and Warbug. 1968. —. “The English Civil War,? New Statesman and Nation. 24 August 1940. —. Pages from a Scullion’s Diary: An Extract from “Down and Out in Paris and London?. London: Penguin Books. 1995. —. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1949. Rai, Alok. Orwell and the Politics of Despair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988. Schaff, Adam. Marxism and the Human Individual. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1970. Smyer, Richard I. Animal Farm: Pastoralism and Politics. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1988. Symons, Julian. Introduction. Animal Farm. By George Orwell. New York: Everyman’s Press. 1993. Trotsky, Leon. Stalin School of Falsification. Russia. 1931. Varlamov, K. Socialist Management: The Leninist Concept. Moscow: Progress Publishers. 1977. Voorhees, Richard J. The Paradox of George Orwell. Iowa: Purdue University Research Foundation. 1961. Williams, Raymond. George Orwell. New York: The Viking Press. 1971. Zwerdling, Alex. Orwell and the Left. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1974.
Bibliography
right out of my ass
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