Animal Farm

 This week I had the chance to read Animal Farm by George Orwell, and I loved it (I feel like I say this every time I talk about a book now :) ). 

 The book follows a group of farm animals who set out to organize their version of a utopian society where the animals no longer work under humans and are free to spend their time as they wish (as long as they continue to maintain the farm). The animals initially establish seven commandments and form a system known as "animalism." The commandments are initially phrases such as "No animal must ever live in a house or sleep in a bed or wear clothes or drink alcohol or smoke tobacco or touch money or engage in trade" and "all animals are equal." We watch a slow transition from a completely equal society with fixed morals to certain animals being placed into positions of power (the pigs) and the line between what is correct and wrong (in an animalism society) being blurred. Initially, the rest of the animals are thrilled at the thought of no human (In this particular farm, the human in question is one Mr. Jones) and freedom. As time wears on the animals are subject to increasingly brutal hours and more work from their new leaders (pigs) than what they had initially been exposed to with Mr. Jones. While the pigs initially worked and maintained some image of equality, this soon changed with the pigs slowly reducing the amount of work they did, moving into a now vacant Mr. Jones house, and consuming human food. 

 What's brilliant about this story is the fact that Orwell wrote the entire book as an allegory of the Russian Revolution, each of the characters represents some central character in the conflict (Napoleon is Stalin, Mr. Jones is Tsar Nicholas II, and Boxer, the horse who continually pushes himself to benefit others in positions above him is the working class.) 

This condensation of complex history, human psychology, and power politics into a simple childlike story results in an unmissable read.