Animal Farm: Book Review

Animal Farm is a classic symbolic story of the ideas of communism and revolution.  It was published in England on August 17, 1945. This novella is a great book for students to read, especially to change the point of view of events after the Russian revolution and the world leaders at the time by portraying them as animals.

This book helps students by feeling like they’re listening to a story being told, rather than directly learning history that often times, are not easy for students to quite remember. Animal farm is being told as a story of a historical era that has characters portraying important leaders during that era as animal, and also includes historical terms changed to the story’s outline like: nationalism as “animalism” and the characters include: Mr. Jones: the farm owner, represents the last Tsar of Russia, Old Major: his ideals can be compared to Anarchist Communism;even some aspects of Leninism, Snowball: He represents two characters primarily: Trotsky and Lenin,the pigs are the Communists, the horses are the workers, the dogs are the army or police, and the birds are non-labor types including clergy and farmer, and important battles like: The Battle of the Windmill, symbolic of the Battle of Stalingrad.

This book is very rich in the sense of historical knowledge and is a great book to read in history classes as well.

Are there any themes that you can relate to in this world today?

As I read the book I can’t help but think of the dictator of North Korea and his ongoing power games with the US and China.