ANIMAL FARM

I thought that I would never catch myself reading a book full of symbolism, but George Orwell's Animal Farm changed that. Orwell's political view jump right through the pages.

The story starts with Old Major, an aged pig that resides in the Manor Farm meets with the other animals and tells them how terrible the humans truly are and how horrible the animals are treated. Old Major also teaches the animals a revolutionary song, Beasts of England. A few days later, Old Major died, but he inspired the animals to start a revolution. Two younger pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, positioned themselves as commander and drove the drunken Mr. Jones from the farmed and renamed the place "Animal Farm." At first, all goes well. The animals cooperate and work hard with one another. The animals even learned how to read and write and even came up with the Seven Commandments. The pigs named themselves as leaders, which was fine, because they were the most intelligent of them all. The farm becomes rocky when Snowball brings up the idea of the windmill. That is when corruption kicks in and the demise begins. To find out what happens to pig political leaders, I suggest reading the book.

Orwell made the animal characters very human-like. The animals talked to each other, had strong opinions, read, write, and become corrupted just as we humans do when given a powerful position. This represented Orwell's views on Stalin's communism. Old Major had ideas similar to that of Karl Marx, Napoleon was similar to Stalin himself, and Snowball was similar to Leon Trotsky. Talk about personification!

I highly recommend this book to people interested in politics, for this brutally explains corruption. Really, anyone could enjoy this book.