Authoritarianism throughout the world keeps ‘Animal Farm’ relevant


Rassiq Aziz Kabir   | Published: January 27, 2022 16:37:47


Authoritarianism throughout the world keeps ‘Animal Farm’ relevant

"All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

These two lines from George Orwell's ‘Animal Farm’ have perfectly portrayed the authoritarian regimes of the world and have made millions of people around the world about what revolutions can turn into after getting complete authority.

Animal Farm, the novella written by George Orwell is famously regarded to be one of the greatest novels of all time.

It is generally thought to be a subtle and creative mockery of the then Soviet government, which assumed power through revolution but soon enough forgot all the things that were supposed to come with the revolution as the new country was ought to come out of the shackles of the feudal lords as well as the Tsar.

The story of the novella takes place on a run-down farm somewhere in England, where the animals of the farm are increasingly pissed off by the treatment of Mr Jones, an alcoholic farmer who owns the farm.

The animals were united against him by a boar named Old Major, a character which was loosely based on Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, people whose ideological framework were largely followed during the October revolution.

After the demise of Old Major, two boars named Snowball and Napoleon who are based on Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin respectively successfully lead the animals into conquering the farm in various steps.

But even after their assumption of power, inequality does not go away. Rather it takes a different form through the tyrannies of Napoleon which is immortalised by the famous lines as mentioned above.

Orwell, a democratic socialist himself, was a vocal critic of the Soviet Union and everything that was against the overall freedom of people around the world.

Orwell perfectly showed in this book that although sounding like a utopia, where everyone would live peacefully and happily when originally proposed, the communist regime of the Soviet Union turned out to be one of the most tyrannical regimes in the history of the world.

Orwell warned the world about authoritarianism and the dangers that come with it through not only this book but also with another of his masterpiece, 1984.

As we look around the world, we see a striking similarity to what Orwell has depicted in Animal Farm.

George Orwell might very well be regarded as a writer who accurately described the course in which the world is going to go, despite progressing and modernising in a lot of ways.

rassiq.aziz@gmail.com

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