Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Animal Farm Context
- The Author
- George Orwell was known as a journalist and social
commentator, rather than novelist
- fought for the
Republicans in the
Spanish Civil War but
couldn't sign up for WW2
due to ill-health
- died of tuberculosis in 1950
- Personal Experiences
- Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War are relevant
to the explicity political Animal Farm. He became
dillusioned with politics after seeing the in-fighting of
people who were meant to be on the same side
- Orwell stated that the book was an attack on dictatorships in
general and the way in which they seized and held onto
power
- Setting and Place
- the book is set on a farm, an unlikely setting for a
revolution. The farm animals are anthropomorphic,
although they still behave in ways characteristic to
their species
- Karl Marx and Communism
- Marx believed
that in a
capitalist society
workers were
exploited by the
people they
worked for
- he stated that society
should be free and
equal
- Capitalists would pay their workers less
money in order to make more profit
- because of this the workers would rebel
against the capitalists and overthrow
them. They would then establish a more
equal society
- An allegory of Russian History
- In 1917 the February rebellion overthrew
the Tsar, but within months the
Provisional Government was itself
overthrown by the Communist Party, led
by Lenin
- Lenin died in
1924. A
struggle for
power
between
Trotsky and
Stalin followed
- The Soviet Union under Stalin
- By 1928, Stalin had become a dictator. His rule seemed to have
little in common with the ideas of Lenin or Marx
- propoganda was a frequently used tool that further
emphasised the control Stalin had over Soviet life.
- past enemies were presented to the people as allies
- "show trials" were
stage in which
people confessed to
crimes they had not
committed
- people who opposed him were exiled or executed
- Stalin exiled Trotsky in 1929
- in Trotsky's absence, Stalin blamed him
for the county's problems and claimed
Trotsky was working with the country's
enemy to overthrow the government