George Orwell, the world-renowned British writer, also the father of the classic Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, has always been regarded as a master of political allegory. Some literature critic commented, “the more people read Orwell’s, the more the freedom of man is safeguarded.” Born in a “lower-upper-middle class” family, as described by himself, Orwell led a hard life in his early years and had witnessed the miserable lives of people from the lower part of society both in colonial India and his homeland Britain. Such experience had caused him great sympathy for the poor and made him accept socialism. But later experience when he fought in Spanish civil war, which nearly killed him and his wife, had shocked Orwell and made him realized the cruelty and anti-socialism essence of Stalinism. Ever since then, Orwell dropped his fantasy, became a firm believer of democratic socialist , and began to fight against totalitarianism with his pen. And therefore came the birth of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four.
The story begins with an old pig, named Old Major’s teaching speech that human beings would one day be driven out of the Farm and animals should be masters of their own. Just 3 months after Old Major’s death, the “revolution” against the farm owner, Mr. Jones, and his workers breaks out and under the leadership of the pigs, all the animals on the Farm successfully drive away all human beings, and establish a “Republic” for animals only, under the principle of “Animalism”. All the animals are very happy and proud of themselves. They do farm work to support themselves and soon, with their great enthusiasm and much effort, their self-sufficient economy begins to thrive. But just at this time when everything within the Republic is going well, a faction in the leading class—the pigs takes place as one pig, Napoleon, uses tricks and forces to expel another pig, Snowball, another leader who always opposes him on all issues. After the expulsion of the greatest opposition party, Napoleon, the cruel dictator gradually unveiled his evil nature. Possessing absolute ruling power and good playing conspiracies, Napoleon begin to establish his reign of terror step by step, devoid of all principles. Years pass, and the Farm finally develops, or retrogresses into a state no different from the age of Mr. Jones when there’re endless exploitation and slavery, except that the minority pigs take his place.
Indeed, Animal Farm is a profound work of political allegory, as is known to all; but people will still be marveled at Orwell’s genius and insightful predictability, if they compare this story, created in 1945, with the history of the transitory Soviet Union, which in the end transformed into a capitalist country.. Orwell was much experienced and well aware of the inner flaws of any socialist regime. It was out of his careful reasoning that he foresaw the destiny of Soviet Union and wrote the Animal Farm.
Nevertheless, animals are always animal, but men are sometimes no man, or even worse than bloody beasts. In reality, the history of Soviet Union reveals to us a more complicated and bloody pictures of atrocious dictatorship and degeneration of human nature. The much worse historic truth is far from what an allegory like Animal Farm can describe.
Human beings are no cleverer than they used to be. Thus what had happened in the past is very likely to happen again. Today, we read Animal Farm, we learn from it, so that as a unity of a civilized citizens, we could work together to prevent or snuff out any emergence of totalitarianism; so that our freedom, freedom of all and freedom of our posterity would be safe.
What, then, should every individual reader learn from Animal Farm?
Here, the concept of initiative should be introduced. It’s an attitude of activeness toward public affairs, which means each individual should actively think, speak out, and participate in the discussion of public affairs. Such personal pinions would form collective appeals and finally in social game, the answer of public policy to demands from various sectors of society could reach a state of equilibrium. What’s worth noticing is that it’s right for each individual to have their personal appeal based on their own interests.
Such required quality of initiative asks for evasion of idleness of intelligence or intellectual laziness (智力上的懒惰) in every individual. That is everyone ought not to give up their own right of hearing. Refuse to let others, or even worse, some leader, who would always like to speak for “their beloved people” and would always grows into a cruel dictator, tell the public what you want in your stead. In a democracy, everyone actively speaks for themselves what kind of society, future, and a better world they want.
The rise and fall of Animal Farm is actually a process of how individual initiative is gradually weakened and finally deprived of.
At the very beginning, the major animals begin to give up their initiatives as they accept the teaching of Old Major, the prophet of Animalism. Such worship of utopian ideal is much without thinking. However, it was their miserable condition that forces them to follow his teachings. As we can compare the situation with those of Russia before the October Revolution and Germany before WWII, the mobs, mostly poor peasants and workers and desperate middle-class, were left with no choice but to lose their sense and rebel. Therefore, at these times, all kinds of “isms” prevailed and developed into various totalitarianism.
Immediately after the rebellion finished, the Animal Farm was successfully established. With ecstasy and enthusiasm, animals worked hard to create a prosperous economy. High efficiency comes from on sole mind of all—the mind absolutely obeying the orders form the superior. The rapid prosperity was achieved at the price of suppressing diversity of initiative, which undermined the rise of totalitarianism and the fall of the Animal Farm.
The expulsion of Snowball could be seen as a turning point of both the history of Animal Farm and the losing of initiative, as Snowball led the opposition party which well balanced the power structure and prevented personality cult and totalitarianism. In “post-Snowball” era, the degeneration of the ruling class—pigs, became more and more serious, and various tricks and conspiracies had been frequently used to deceive, to exploit, and to repress the laboring majority, whose situations were even worse than when Mr. Jones ruled. The death of the honest Boxer, an faithful follower, but also a slave having no thoughts of his own, is a fairly alarming lesson we are taught, as he was miserably abandoned by his beloved and trusted revolutionary leader.
By Victor Chung
