Animal Farm

Every time I re-read this book a new golden nugget appears, which is incredible considering how succinct the fable is. This time I found specially amusing the cat's engagement on the re-education committee and found myself laughing at the clever writing multiple times, like remembering old morbid humour jokes that still warrant a nose exhale.

Orwell's goal of putting to pen in simple terms a trajectory from democracy to authoritarianism through revolution is achieved with flying colours, but it is also quite tragically amusing how his work is mostly interpreted nowadays as a critique of anything anti-capitalist as a whole - despite Orwell himself being a democratic socialist. Given how far we are in the current globalized economy from the possibility of further communist revolutions and how close we became with strongmen nationalism, I'd say reading modern takes on authoritarianism like "How Democracies Die" by Ziblatt & Levitsky is more useful. Still, Animal Farm holds to its title of the most ludic take.

I first read this in year seven or year eight at secondary school. Back then, we would stop after each chapter and analyse what we had just read. I think back to those classes with much intellectual happiness and greatly miss being able to hear everyone's opinions about the different characters and their narrative directions. I asked a group of my friends the other day what they thought about Orwell and none of them knew who he was. I, then, mentioned Animal Farm and 1984 and got the same response. I'm not writing this to speak negatively on them (for I, still, have not read 1984) but I just think it's an interesting direction that society may be going towards. On another analyse of this same situation, I think it's also fascinating to understand the different books everyone had to read during their schooling. For me, it was predominantly Animal Farm and Of Mice and Men but, for others, it could be something different entirely. To actually talk on the book, it's brilliant. The allegorical nature of it's narrative means that everything can be understood on several layers and the application of contextual theory to the characters allows for an even deeper understanding each time. This is a book you can revisit several times throughout your life and get a different evaluation each time. I can't wait to read 1984 (which is next).