Animal Farm

by George Orwell, Russell Baker (Preface by), Téa Obreht (Introduction)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Even if you read this in school, it's time to read it again. Under the cuddly guise of an animal society, the encroaching totalitarian state is not lost on the pigs and the hamsters of the world. It's an unexpectedly cautionary tale that's widely banned for a reason.

75th Anniversary Edition—Includes a New Introduction by Téa Obreht

George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism.

SOON TO BE A NETFLIX FILM!

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
 
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451526342
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/06/2004
Series:	Signet Classics Series
Edition description:	50th Anniversary Edition
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	1,550
Product dimensions:	4.40(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	1170L (what's this?)

About the Author

George Orwell (pseudonym for Eric Blair [1903-50]) was born in Bengal and educated at Eton; after service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living penning novels and essays. He was essentially a political writer who focused his attention on his own times, a man of intense feelings and intense hates. An opponent of totalitarianism, he served in the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Besides his classic Animal Farm, his works include a novel based on his experiences as a colonial policeman, Burmese Days, two firsthand studies of poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier, an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia; and the extraordinary novel of political prophecy whose title became part of our language, 1984.

Table of Contents

	How to study	v
	How to use this guide	ix
	Key to icons	x
	Background	1
	The story of Animal Farm	5
	Who's who?	10
	The main animal characters	10
	The other animals	19
	The humans	21
	Themes	23
	How to get to the top	23
	How to tell lies	25
	The uses of literacy	28
	Down with "isms"	29
	Language, style and structure	32
	Just words?	32
	Do we laugh?	33
	The structure of the novel	34
	The use of repetition	35
	Commentary	37
Chapter 138
Chapter 241
Chapter 344
Chapter 448
Chapter 551
Chapter 655
Chapter 758
Chapter 862
Chapter 966
Chapter 1071
	Topics for discussion and brainstorming	77
	How to get an "A" in English Literature	79
	The exam essay	80
	Model answer and essay plans	81
	Glossary of literary terms	84
	Index	86

Editorial Reviews

Animal Farm remains our great satire on the darker face of modern history.”—Malcolm Bradbury

“As lucid as glass and quite as sharp…[Animal Farm] has the double meaning, the sharp edge, and the lucidity of Swift.”—Atlantic Monthly

“A wise, compassionate, and illuminating fable for our times.”—The New York Times

“Orwell has worked out his theme with a simplicity, a wit, and a dryness that are close to La Fontaine and Gay, and has written in a prose so plain and spare, so admirably proportioned to his purpose, that Animal Farm even seems very creditable if we compare it with Voltaire and Swift.”—Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker

“Orwell’s satire here is amply broad, cleverly conceived, and delightfully written.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“The book for everyone and Everyman, its brightness undimmed after fifty years.”—Ruth Rendell

From the Publisher

Absolutely first-rate...comparable to Voltaire and Swift. -- The New Yorker

Edmund Wilson

George Orwell's classic satirical fable, first published in 1945, likens the Russian Revolution to events on a British farm. Led by pigs resembling Stalin and Trotsky, the animals overthrow their farmer overlord and seek to transform the farm into a collective for their mutual benefit. This is one of the key literary masterpieces in English indicting Russian communism--including THE LIGHT THAT FAILED, DARKNESS AT NOON, and Orwell's chilling 1984--that appeared before the end of the Cold War and are still worth reading today. Richard Matthews delivers the narrative in formal BBC-style tones and fully voices the characters. Perhaps because of this approach, there is nothing fabulous about the fable as he reads it. Otherwise, his is a serviceable, if undistinguished, reading. Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

JUN/JUL 03 - AudioFile