George Orwell Animal Farm: Longman Study Texts

George Orwell, Edited by Robert Wilson, Series Editor Roy Blachford, Linda Cookson

ISBN 10: 0582330874 / ISBN 13: 9780582330870

Published by Longman Group UK: Longman Study Texts by Permission of Martin Secker and Warburg, Harlow, Essex, England, 1989

About this Item

Firmly bound with marks and handling wear including creases on the cover. A literary study guide, includes the full text of Animal Farm.

Seller Inventory # 062798

Bibliographic Details

• Title: George Orwell Animal Farm: Longman Study Texts
• Publisher: Longman Group UK: Longman Study Texts by Permission of Martin Secker and Warburg, Harlow, Essex, England
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0582330874
• ISBN 13: 9780582330870
• Binding: Soft cover
• Printing: 5th or later Printin
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

George Orwell's timeless fable—a parable for would-be liberators everywhere, glimpsed through the lens of our own history.

As ferociously fresh as it was more than a half century ago, this remarkable allegory of a downtrodden society of overworked, mistreated animals, and their quest to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality is one of the most scathing satires ever published. As we witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, we begin to recognize the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organization; and in our most charismatic leaders, the souls of our cruelest oppressors.

With a foreword by Ann Patchett

Review

Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. --Joyce Thompson