Thursday, 15 May 2014

ROYAL IRISH PIGS IN HOLOCAUST DENIAL



This article is about the novel by George Orwell. For other uses, see Animal Farm (disambiguation).
Animal Farm
AnimalFarm 1stEd.jpg
First edition cover
AuthorGeorge Orwell
Original titleAnimal Farm: A Fairy Story
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenrePolitical satire
Published17 August 1945 (Secker and Warburg, London, England)
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages112 (UK paperback edition)
ISBNISBN 0-452-28424-4 (present)ISBN 978-0-452-28424-1
OCLC53163540
823/.912 20
LC ClassPR6029.R8 A63 2003b
Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novel by George Orwell, published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union.[1] Orwell, a democratic socialist,[2] was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War.[3]The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell describedAnimal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin "un conte satirique contre Staline",[4] and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), he wrote thatAnimal Farm was the first book in which he had tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".
The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, though the subtitle was dropped by U.S. publishers for its 1946 publication and subsequently all but one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime omitted it. Other variations in the title include: A Satire and A Contemporary Satire.[4] Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which recalled the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques, and which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin for "bear", a symbol of Russia.[4]
Orwell wrote the book from November 1943 – February 1944, when the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was at its height and Stalin was regarded highly by the British people and intelligentsia, a circumstance that Orwell hated.[5] It was initially rejected by a number of British and American publishers,[6] including one of Orwell's own, Victor Gollancz. Its publication was thus delayed, though it became a great commercial success when it did finally appear partly because the Cold War so quickly followed World War II.[7]
Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005);[8] it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996, and is also included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.

Plot summary

Old Major, the old boar on the Manor Farm, summons the animals on the farm together for a meeting, during which he refers to humans as parasites and teaches the animals a revolutionary song called Beasts of England. When Major dies, two young pigs, Snowballand Napoleon, assume command and consider it a duty to prepare for the Rebellion. The animals revolt and drive the drunken and irresponsible farmer Mr. Jones from the farm, renaming it "Animal Farm". They adopt Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, "All animals are equal."
Snowball teaches the animals to read and write, while Napoleon educates young puppies on the principles of Animalism. Food is plentiful, and the farm runs smoothly. The pigs elevate themselves to positions of leadership and set aside special food items, ostensibly for their personal health. Napoleon and Snowball struggle for preeminence. When Snowball announces his plans to build a windmill, Napoleon has his dogs chase Snowball away and subsequently declares himself leader of Animal Farm.
Napoleon enacts changes to the governance structure of the farm, replacing meetings with a committee of pigs who will run the farm. Through a young pig named Squealer, Napoleon claims credit for the windmill idea. The animals work harder with the promise of easier lives with the windmill. When the animals find the windmill collapsed after a violent storm, Napoleon and Squealer convince the animals that Snowball is trying to sabotage their project. Once Snowball becomes a scapegoat, Napoleon begins to purge the farm with his dogs, killing animals he accuses of consorting with his old rival. Beasts of England is replaced by an anthem glorifying Napoleon, who appears to be adopting the lifestyle of a man. The animals remain convinced that they are better off than they were under Mr. Jones.
Mr Frederick, one of the neighbouring farmers, attacks the farm, using blasting powder to blow up the restored windmill. Though the animals win the battle, they do so at great cost, as many, including Boxer the workhorse, are wounded. Despite his injuries, Boxer continues working harder and harder, until he collapses while working on the windmill. Napoleon sends for a van to take Boxer to the veterinary surgeon, explaining that better care can be given there. Benjamin, the cynical donkey who "could read as well as any pig",[9] notices that the van belongs to a knacker, and attempts a futile rescue. Squealer reports that the van was purchased by the hospital and the writing from the previous owner had not been repainted. But in reality, Napoleon has sold his most loyal and long-suffering worker for money to buy himself whisky.
Years pass, and the pigs start to resemble humans, as they walk upright, carry whips, and wear clothes. The Seven Commandments are abridged to a single phrase: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". Napoleon holds a dinner party for the pigs and local farmers, with whom he celebrates a new alliance. He abolishes the practice of the revolutionary traditions and restores the name "The Manor Farm". As the animals look from pigs to humans, they realise they can no longer distinguish between the two.

Characters

Pigs

  • Old Major – An aged prize Middle White boar provides the inspiration that fuels the Rebellion in the book. He is an allegorical combination of Karl Marx, one of the creators of communism, and Lenin, the communist leader of the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet nation, in that he draws up the principles of the revolution. His skull being put on revered public display recalls Lenin, whose embalmed body was put on display.[10][11]
  • Napoleon – "A large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way".[12] An allegory of Joseph Stalin,[10] Napoleon is the main villain of Animal Farm. In the first French version of Animal Farm, Napoleon is called César, the French form of Caesar,[4]although another translation has him as Napoléon.[13]
  • Snowball – Napoleon's rival and original head of the farm after Jones' overthrow. He is mainly based on Leon Trotsky,[10] but also combines elements from Lenin.[11]
  • Squealer – A small, white, fat porker who serves as Napoleon's right-trotter pig and minister of propaganda, holding a position similar to that of Molotov.[10]
  • Minimus – A poetic pig who writes the second and third national anthems of Animal Farm after the singing of "Beasts of England" is banned.
  • The Piglets – Hinted to be the children of Napoleon and are the first generation of animals subjugated to his idea of animal inequality.
  • The young pigs – Four pigs who complain about Napoleon's takeover of the farm but are quickly silenced and later executed.
  • Pinkeye – A minor pig who is mentioned only once; he is the pig that tastes Napoleon's food to make sure it is not poisoned, in response to rumours about an assassination attempt on Napoleon.

Humans

  • Mr Jones – The former owner of the farm, Jones is a very heavy drinker. The animals revolt against him after he drinks so much that he does not feed or take care of them. He is an allegory of Russian Tsar Nicholas II,[14] who abdicated following the February Revolution of 1917 and was executed, along with the rest of his family, by theBolsheviks on 17 July 1918.
  • Mr Frederick – The tough owner of Pinchfield, a small but well-kept neighbouring farm, who briefly enters into an alliance with Napoleon. He is an allegory of Adolf Hitler,[15][16][17][18] who enters into a neutrality pact with Joseph Stalin's USSR only to later break it by invading the Soviet Union.
  • Mr Pilkington – The easy-going but crafty and well-to-do owner of Foxwood, a large neighbouring farm overgrown with weeds.
  • Mr Whymper – A man hired by Napoleon to act as the liaison between Animal Farm and human society. At first he is used to acquire goods needed for the farm, such as dog biscuits and paraffin, but later he procures luxuries like alcohol for the pigs.

Horses and donkeys

  • Boxer – A loyal, kind, dedicated, hard working, and respectable cart-horse, although quite naive and gullible. Boxer does a large share of the physical labor on the farm, adhering to the simplistic belief that working harder will solve all the animal's problems.
  • Mollie – A self-centered, self-indulgent and vain young white mare who quickly leaves for another farm after the revolution. She is only once mentioned again, in a manner similar to those who left Russia after the fall of the Tsar.
  • Clover - A gentle, caring female horse, who shows concern especially for Boxer, who often pushes himself too hard. She seems to catch on to the sly tricks and schemes set up by Napoleon and Squealer.
  • Benjamin – A donkey, one of the oldest, wisest animals on the farm, and one of the few who can read properly. He is skeptical, temperamental and pessimistic: his most frequent remark is, "Life will go on as it has always gone on—that is, badly."[19] The academic Morris Dickstein has suggested there is "a touch of Orwell himself in this creature's timeless skepticism"[20] and indeed, friends called Orwell "Donkey George", "after his grumbling donkey Benjamin, in Animal Farm."[21]

Other animals

  • Muriel – A wise old goat who is friends with all of the animals on the farm. She, like Benjamin and Snowball, is one of the few animals on the farm who can read.
  • The Puppies – Offspring of Jessie and Bluebell, taken away from them by Napoleon at birth and reared by Napoleon to be his security force.
  • Moses – The raven "was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker." Initially following Mrs. Jones into exile, he reappears several years later and resumes his role of talking but not working. He regales Animal Farm's denizens with tales of a wondrous place beyond the clouds called "Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest forever from our labours!" Orwell portrays established religion as "the black raven of priestcraft—promising pie in the sky when you die, and faithfully serving whoever happens to be in power." Napoleon brings the raven back (Ch. IX) as Stalin brought back the Russian Orthodox Church.[20]
  • The Sheep – They show limited understanding of the Animalism and the political atmosphere of the farm, yet nonetheless they blindly support Napoleon's ideals with vocal jingles during his speeches and meetings with Snowball.
  • The Hens – The hens are among the first to rebel against Napoleon.
  • The Cows – Their milk is stolen by the pigs, who learn to milk them. The milk is stirred into the pigs' mash every day, while the other animals are denied such luxuries.
  • The Cat – Never seen to carry out any work, the cat is absent for long periods, and is forgiven because her excuses are so convincing and she "purred so affectionately that it was impossible not to believe in her good intentions".[22] She has no interest in the politics of the farm, and the only time she is recorded as having participated in an election, she is found to have actually "voted on both sides".[22]

Composition and publication

Origin

George Orwell wrote the manuscript in 1943 and 1944 subsequent to his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, which he described in Homage to Catalonia (1938). In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, he explained how escaping the communist purges in Spain taught him "how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries". This motivated Orwell to expose and strongly condemn what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original socialist ideals.[23]
Immediately prior to his writing, Orwell had quit the BBC. He was also upset about a booklet for propagandists the Ministry of Information had put out. The booklet included instructions on how to quell ideological fears of the Soviet Union, such as directions to claim that the Red Terror was a figment of Nazi imagination.[24]
In the preface, Orwell also described the source of the idea of setting the book on a farm:[23]
...I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.

Efforts to find a publisher

Orwell encountered great difficulty getting the manuscript published, as it was feared that the book might upset the alliance between the US, UK, and the Soviet Union. Four publishers refused; one had initially accepted the work but declined after consulting theMinistry of Information.[25][26] Eventually, Secker and Warburg published the first edition in 1945.
During World War II, it became apparent to Orwell that anti-Soviet literature was not something which most major publishing houses would touch — including his regular publisher Gollancz. He also submitted the manuscript to Faber and Faber, where the poetT. S. Eliot (who was a director of the firm) rejected it; Eliot wrote back to Orwell praising its "good writing" and "fundamental integrity", but declared that they would only accept it for publication if they had some sympathy for the viewpoint "which I take to be generallyTrotskyite". Eliot said he found the view "not convincing", and contended that the pigs were made out to be the best to run the farm; he posited that someone might argue "what was needed.. was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs".[27][28] Orwell let André Deutsch, who was working for Nicholson & Watson in 1944, read the typescript, and Deutsch was convinced that Nicholson & Watson would want to publish it; however, they did not, and "lectured Orwell on what they perceived to be errors in Animal Farm."[29] In hisLondon Letter on 17 April 1944 for Partisan Review, Orwell wrote that it was "now next door to impossible to get anything overtly anti-Russian printed. Anti-Russian books do appear, but mostly from Catholic publishing firms and always from a religious or frankly reactionary angle."
The publisher Jonathan Cape, who had initially accepted Animal Farm, subsequently rejected the book after an official at the British Ministry of Information warned him off[30] — although the civil servant who it is assumed gave the order was later found to be a Sovietspy.[31] Writing to Leonard Moore, a partner in the literary agency of Christy & Moore, publisher Jonathan Cape explained that the decision had been taken on the advice of a senior official in the Ministry of Information. Such flagrant anti-Soviet bias was unacceptable, and the choice of pigs as the dominant class was thought to be especially offensive. It may reasonably be assumed that the 'important official' was a man namedPeter Smollett, who was later unmasked as a Soviet agent.[32] Orwell was suspicious of Smollett/Smolka, and he would be one of the names Orwell included in his list of Crypto-Communists and Fellow-Travellers sent to the Information Research Department in 1949. Born Hans Peter Smolka in Vienna in 1912, he came to Britain in 1933 as an NKVD agent with the codename 'Abo',[33] became a naturalised British subject in 1938, changed his name, and after the outbreak of World War II joined the Ministry of Information where he organised pro-Soviet propaganda, working with Kim Philby in 1943-45.[34] Smollett's family have rejected the accusation that he was a spy.[32] The publisher wrote to Orwell, saying:[30]
If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators [Lenin and Stalin], that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships.
Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.
Frederic Warburg also faced pressures against publication, even from people in his own office and from his wife Pamela, who felt that it was not the moment for ingratitude towards Stalin and the heroic Red Army,[35] which had played a major part in defeating Hitler. A Russian translation was printed in the paper Posev, and in giving permission for a Russian translation of Animal Farm, Orwell refused in advance all royalties. A translation in Ukrainian, which was produced in Germany, was confiscated in large part by the American wartime authorities and handed over to the Soviet repatriation commission.[36]
In October 1945, Orwell wrote to Frederic Warburg expressing interest in pursuing the possibility that the political cartoonist David Low might illustrate Animal Farm. Low had written a letter saying that he had had "a good time with ANIMAL FARM - an excellent bit of satire - it would illustrate perfectly." Nothing came of this, and a trial issue produced by Secker & Warburg in 1956 illustrated by John Driver was abandoned, but the Folio Societypublished an edition in 1984 illustrated by Quentin Blake and an edition illustrated by the cartoonist Ralph Steadman was published by Secker & Warburg in 1995 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first edition of Animal Farm.[37]

"The Freedom of the Press"

Orwell originally wrote a preface complaining about British self-censorship and how the British people were suppressing criticism of the USSR, their World War II ally. "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.... Things are kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervenes but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact." Although the first edition allowed space for the preface, it was not included,[25] and as of June 2009 it has not been published with most editions of the book.[38]
Secker and Warburg published the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945 without any introduction. However, the publisher had provided space for a preface in the author's proof composited from the manuscript. For reasons unknown, no preface was supplied, and all the page numbers needed to be redone at the last minute.[39][40]
Years later, in 1972, Ian Angus found the original typescript titled "The Freedom of the Press", and Bernard Crick published it, together with his own introduction, in The Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972[39] as "How the essay came to be written".[40]Orwell's essay criticised British self-censorship by the press, specifically the suppression of unflattering descriptions of Stalin and the Soviet government.[40] The same essay also appeared in the Italian 1976 Animal Farm edition, with another introduction by Crick, claiming to be the first edition with the preface.[39] Other publishers were still declining to publish it.[clarification needed]

Critical response

Contemporary reviews of the work were not universally positive. Writing in the AmericanNew Republic magazine, George Soule expressed his disappointment in the book, writing that it "puzzled and saddened me. It seemed on the whole dull. The allegory turned out to be a creaking machine for saying in a clumsy way things that have been said better directly." Soule believed that the animals were not consistent enough with their real world inspirations, and said, "It seems to me that the failure of this book (commercially it is already assured of tremendous success) arises from the fact that the satire deals not with something the author has experienced, but rather with stereotyped ideas about a country which he probably does not know very well".[41]
Tosco Fyvel, writing in Tribune, 24 August 1945, called the book "a gentle satire on a certain State and on the illusions of an age which may already be behind us." Julian Symons responded, on 7 September, "Should we not expect, in Tribune at least, acknowledgement of the fact that it is a satire not at all gentle upon a particular State -Soviet Russia? It seems to me that a reviewer should have the courage to identify Napoleon with Stalin, and Snowball with Trotsky, and express an opinion favourable or unfavourable to the author, upon a political ground. In a hundred years time perhaps,Animal Farm may be simply a fairy story, today it is a political satire with a good deal of point."
Animal Farm has been subject to much comment in the decades since these early remarks.[42]

Analysis

Animalism

"Seven Commandments" redirects here. For the Noahide code, see Seven Laws of Noah.
The pigs Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer adapt Old Major's ideas into "a complete system of thought", which they formally name Animalism, an allegoric reference toCommunism. Soon after, Napoleon and Squealer partake in activities associated with the humans (drinking alcohol, sleeping in beds, trading), which were explicitly prohibited by the Seven Commandments. Squealer is employed to alter the Seven Commandments to account for this humanisation, an allusion to the Soviet government's revising of history in order to exercise control of the people's beliefs about themselves and their society.[43]

Squealer sprawls at the foot of the end wall of the big barn where the Seven Commandments were written (ch. viii)—preliminary artwork for a 1950 strip cartoon by Norman Pett and Donald Freeman
The original commandments are:
  1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
  2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
  3. No animal shall wear clothes.
  4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
  5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
  6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
  7. All animals are equal.
Later, Napoleon and his pigs secretly revise some commandments to clear themselves of accusations of law-breaking. The changed commandments are as follows, with the changes bolded:
  1. No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.
  2. No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.
  3. No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.
Eventually, these are replaced with the maxims, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", and "Four legs good, two legs better!" as the pigs become more human. This is an ironic twist to the original purpose of the Seven Commandments, which were supposed to keep order within Animal Farm by uniting the animals together against the humans and preventing animals from following the humans' evil habits. Through the revision of the commandments, Orwell demonstrates how simply political dogma can be turned into malleable propaganda.[44]

Significance and allegory


The Horn and Hoof Flag described in the book appears to be based on the hammer and sickle.
In the Eastern Bloc, both Animal Farm and later Nineteen Eighty-Four were on the list of forbidden books until the end of communism in 1989, and were only available via clandestine Samizdat networks.[citation needed]
Orwell biographer Jeffrey Meyers has written, "virtually every detail has political significance in this allegory." Orwell himself wrote in 1946, "Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution..[and] that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters [-] revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert."[45] In a preface for a 1947 Ukrainian edition, he stated, "... for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement. On my return from Spain [in 1937] I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages."[46]
The revolt of the animals against Farmer Jones is Orwell's analogy with the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and Jones's attempt to regain control, with the aid of neighbouring farmers, parallels the Western powers' efforts of 1918-21 to crush the Bolsheviks. The pigs' rise to pre-eminence mirrors the rise of a Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR, just as Napoleon's emergence as the farm's sole leader reflects Stalin's emergence. The pigs' appropriation of milk and apples for their own use, "the turning point of the story" as Orwell termed it in a letter to Dwight Macdonald,[45] stands as an analogy for the crushing of the left-wing 1921 Kronstadt revolt against the Bolsheviks,[47] and the difficult efforts of the animals to build the windmill suggest the various Five Year Plans. The puppies controlled by Napoleon parallel the nurture of the secret police in the Stalinist structure, and the pigs' treatment of the other animals on the farm recalls the internal terror faced by the populace in the 1930s.[48] In chapter seven, when the animals confess their nonexistent crimes and are killed, Orwell directly alludes to the purges, confessions and show trials of the late 1930s. These contributed to Orwell's conviction that the Bolshevik revolution had been corrupted and the Soviet system become rotten.[49]
Peter Edgerly Firchow and Peter Davison consider that in real life, with events in Animal Farm mirroring those in the Soviet Union, the Battle of the Windmill represents the Great Patriotic War (World War II),[50] especially the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Moscow.[51] During the battle, Frederick drills a hole and places explosives inside, and then "All the animals, including Napoleon" took cover; Orwell had the publisher alter this to "All the animals except Napoleon" in recognition of Joseph Stalin's decision to remain in Moscow during the German advance.[52] This very particular alteration had been occasioned by Orwell having been in Paris in March 1945, working as a war correspondent for the Observer and the Manchester Evening News. In Paris he met Joseph Czapski, a survivor of the Katyn Massacre. In spite of Czapski's opposition to the Soviet regime, he told Orwell, as Orwell wrote to Arthur Koestler, that it had been "the character [and] greatness of Stalin" that saved Russia from the German invasion.[53]
The Battle of the Cowshed represents the allied invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918,[51] and the defeat of the White Russians in the Russian Civil War.[50]

Front row (left to right):Rykov, Skrypnyk, andStalin—'When Snowball comes to the crucial points in his speeches he is drowned out by the sheep (Ch. V), just as in the party Congress in 1927 [above], at Stalin's instigation 'pleas for the opposition were drowned in the continual, hysterically intolerant uproar from the floor'.[54]
Other connections that writers have suggested illustrate Orwell's telescoping of Russian history from 1917 to 1943[55] include the wave of rebelliousness that ran through the countryside after the Rebellion, which stands for the abortive revolutions in Hungary and in Germany (Ch IV); the conflict between Napoleon and Snowball (Ch V), paralleling "the two rival and quasi-Messianic beliefs that seemed pitted against one another:Trotskyism, with its faith in the revolutionary vocation of the proletariat of the West; and Stalinism with its glorification ofRussia's socialist destiny";[56] Napoleon's dealings with Whymper and the Willingdon markets (Ch VI), paralleling theTreaty of Rapallo; and Frederick's bank notes, paralleling theHitler-Stalin non-aggression pact of August 1939, which are forgeries. Frederick attacks Animal Farm without warning and destroys the windmill.[17]
The book's close, with the pigs and men in a kind of rapprochement, reflected Orwell's view of the 1943 Teheran Conference[57] that seemed to display the establishment of "the best possible relations between the USSR and the West"—but in reality were destined, as Orwell presciently predicted, to continue to unravel.[58] The disagreement between the allies and the start of the Cold War is suggested when Napoleon and Pilkington, both suspicious, "played an ace of spades simultaneously".[59]

Adaptations

A BBC radio version, produced by Rayner Heppenstall, was broadcast in January 1947. Orwell listened to the production at his home in Canonbury Square in London, with Hugh Gordon Porteous, amongst others. Orwell later wrote to Heppenstall that Porteous, "who had not read the book, grasped what was happening after a few minutes."[60] A further radio production, again using Orwell's own dramatisation of the book, was broadcast in January 2013 on BBC Radio Four. Tamsin Greig narrated and the cast included Nicky Henson as Napoleon, Toby Jones as the propagandist Squealer, and Ralph Ineson as Boxer.[61]
Animal Farm has been adapted to film twice. The 1954 Animal Farm film was an animated feature and the 1999 Animal Farm film was a TV live action version. Both differ from the novel, and have been accused of taking significant liberties, including sanitising some aspects. In the 1954 version, Napoleon is apparently overthrown in a second revolution. The 1999 film shows Napoleon's regime collapsing in on itself, with the farm having new human owners, as happened in the Soviet Union, appropriating the new political reality to the story. In 2012, a HFR-3D version of Animal Farm potentially directed by Andy Serkiswas announced.[62]
A theatrical version, with music by Richard Peaslee and lyrics by Adrian Mitchell, was staged at the National Theatre London on 25 April 1984, directed by Peter Hall. It toured nine cities in 1985.[63] A solo version, adapted and performed by Guy Masterson, premièred at the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh in January 1995 and has toured worldwide since.[64]

Cultural references

Main article: Animal Farm in popular culture
References to the novel are frequent in other works of popular culture, particularly in popular music and television series.

Editions

On 17 July 2009, Amazon.com withdrew certain Amazon Kindle titles, including Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, from sale, refunded buyers, and remotely deleted items from purchasers' devices after discovering that the publisher lacked rights to publish the titles in question.[65] Notes and annotations for the books made by users on their devices were also deleted.[66] After the move prompted outcry and comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four itself, Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener stated that the company is "[c]hanging our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."[67]

See also

Books:

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