Animal Farm by George Orwell

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The design of building a windmill is to reduce the labor in farm. The ambitious plan is proved difficult at the outset. Animals are facing loads of obstacles, such as to fetch rocks in proper size, to operate human-sized machines, to purchase cement, and so forth. Fortunately, thanks to Napoleon's brilliant mind, he comes out with various approaches, including making deals with Frederick the nearby farm owner for cement, which is a violation of the Seven Commandments, to solve these problems. Under Napoleon's iron discipline, with grave devotion and effort made by other members, a 12-feet foundation had been erected by the end of the autumn. Everyone is content and proud of himself or herself. But the triumph is blown overnight.

There came a winter night when the gale was so violent. When the animals woke up next morning, they found the most heart-breaking scene: Due to the tough gale, the half-built windmill collapsed into ruins. In this very moment, Napoleon, instead of blaming the bad weather and express comforts and condolences to all his comrades, accused that all these is sabotaged by Snowball. Such groundless allegation irritates other animals. Some hens and sheep plot to rebel against Napoleon. But a few days later, Napoleon surprisingly gathers all members in barn and then presents his audience those "traitors" he has caught. After the confession of each "criminal", Napoleon made an order, all those guilty members were slaughtered right in front of other animals.

Ever since this public slaughter, no animal dare even thinks ill about Napoleon. On the other hand, the fallen of windmill has least impact on Napoleon's determination. Thus, everyone is required to go back into the reconstruction.

Since everyone is engaged in construction that nobody participates in farm works, the stock of summer harvest is running out. The food shortage becomes sharp and accurate. To ease the pressing situation, Napoleon strikes a deal with Frederick by selling the forest in the Animal Farm, meanwhile, he also orders that all members should reduce their daily rations so as to ensure the daily consumption of all pigs. And the business with Frederick goes quite well. Frederick fells all those trees in an amazing speed and pay them in bank notes immediately. Everyone is happy because those notes mean that they are about to be free from hungry. But unfortunately, three days later, when Napoleon plans to cash the banknotes, he was told that all of them are forgeries. Desperation emerges in the air around the farm.

In order to survive, Napoleon commands that all animals should prolong their working hours as well as postpone their retirement. To ensure the implement of the policy, all pigs put on the human-beings' clothing and wear in boosts while carrying whips in their trotter----they become dictators of the Animal Farm. Other animals are now officially living under the slavery of their compatriots.

As the time passes, those serving animals in the Farm are gradually dead, but the rest of the compatriots never give up their hope, their original hope. Until one day, Clover the loyal follower witness Napoleon, together with other pigs, sitting in the seat of honor in a ballroom, chatting, smiling, laughing, drinking with other human-beings. And Clover already cannot tell whether they are human or pig.

After finish reading this story, we can tell the author employed plain and common words in his creation that makes this masterpiece easily comprehensible. Moreover, this novel's genre is quite similar with fable that set up a easy and delightful tone. These are two of the basic reasons why this novel is so popular.

This novel also shared distinguished features of modernism. The most obvious one is that the author wildly employed symbols in this work. For example, the name "Napoleon" can be easily associated with Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the most famous general and tactician in Europe. And after you read the all story, we could find out "Napoleon" the pig shares certain similar characteristics with Napoleon Bonaparte. Both of them are valiant and skillful in warfare but arrogant. Also they all turn out to be a dictator. The "building of windmill" symbolized the Utopian society. And the symbolic meaning of "the fallen of the windmill" is the collapse of the domination of animal.

In the novel, the author also remarkably and skillfully employed a figure of speech----paradox. Paradox is a writing technique that the author used a sentence that seems contradictory in the context but if inspected closely makes sense and is a description of a truth. The most impressive example in the work is the following sentence. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". The author allegorically pointed out the fact that equality has never exist in the Farm. ( ) [j]

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