Hi mc,
I appreciate your skepticism.
While everybody is free to take from any author's writings, what they want, I find that both novels, Animal Farm and 1984 warn against the evil of the corruption of power rather the ills of Socialism.
In Animal Farm for example this can be seen in the different mentality of the several pigs. The character, Snowball, who was instrumental in rebellion on the farm, for instance was striving to set up an animal socialist society along the lines of what Old Major had envisioned ie the wealth and fruits of their labor being spread across the farm's population. However after Old Major had met his end, Snowball was quickly expelled by Napoleon and his soldier dogs, and under their propaganda (squealed out by Squealler) was made to be the root of all the farm's evils that befell them, while in reality it was Napoleon and his rise to absolute power, retention of the farm's wealth, and control over all aspects of farm life that was concealed from the farm population. Not so much a warning of the evils of Democratic Socialism as opposed to the evils of the power hungry that corrupt to their own ends and pervert it into communism under a totalitarian regime.
1984 on the other hand had nothing to do with any type of economic system. 1984 was strait up about the evil of the absolute power of a totalitarian regime, Big Brother, which controlled all aspects of its subjects lives right down to what words you can say, and how one should think under the regime's instruction. Unfortunately for Winston, he had a bad run of it against the regime in Oceania.
I have to admit, these are very good reads and I haven't thought too much about them respectively since grade school, but your response made me pick them up again. I appreciate that. There are other writing and essays of Orwell you may want to check out to gain a further understanding of his warning to us. I hope you enjoy them should wish to read them.
'
Last edited by nca225; 06/28/23 07:52 AM.
