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By Evan Tan, Contributor
It is definitely not like the stereotypical, “happily ever
after” fairy tales. But in C.M. Woodhouse’s introduction to
George Orwell’s Animal Farm, he defends Orwell’s choice to
subtitle the book that satirized totalitarianism as a “A Fairy
Story.” “The point about fairy stories is that
they are written not merely without a
moral but without a morality.
They take place in a world beyond good and evil,
where people (or animals) suffer or prosper for reasons unconnected
with ethical merit—for being ugly or beautiful, respectively, for
instance, “or for even more unsatisfactory reasons,” he notes
Echoing the inscription found at the entrance of
Hell from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, his introduction
clearly warns the reader that there is no happy ending to this book.
The start brings to mind the adage that the road
to hell is paved with good intentions: Animal Farm begins hopefully
with the stirring speech from Old Major, Manor Farm’s highly
prized Middle White boar. The dying animal accuses Man as the source
of animal kind’s misery: “Man is the only real enemy we have.
Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork
is abolished forever.” He then shares his dream wherein all
animals would live equally free from the tyranny of men and the
solution to achieve it: “What then must we do? Why, work night and
day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the human race! That is my
message to you, comrades: Rebellion!”
The animals are inflamed by the idea of freedom
and instigate a revolt. Soon enough, they drive out their abusive
master, Mr. Jones, from Manor Farm. They afterwards establish an
egalitarian society founded on Old Major’s words: “Weak or
strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers.”
However, soon after, it all goes downhill: we
witness the compromises and corruption that seep in, and the
atrocities committed by animals against fellow animals. We read
about the hunger to stay in power, and the twisting of facts to suit
the creatures in position. We see how the dream of equality is
successfully perverted and reduced to nonsense, as evidenced by the
manipulation of the farm’s commandment: “All animals are equal.
But some animals are more equal than others.”
The characters we encounter in the book are all
too familiar: there is Napoleon, the Berkshire boar who becomes
drunken with power, manipulating the grand ideas proposed by Old
Major to serve his greed; Squealer, his accomplice, who propagates
lies to keep Napoleon and the other pigs in rule; Boxer, the brawny
horse who blindly and steadfastly professes faith in Napoleon yet is
betrayed in the end; Mollie, the self-absorbed mare who flees to
another farm after the rebellion, too inured in the comforts of
domestication; Benjamin, the disillusioned wise donkey who shows
apathy to the rebellion and to change; and Moses the raven, who
spins tales of a land called Sugarcandy Mountain, a place of
happiness where all the hardworking animals go after death. Being an
allegory, Animal Farm proves timely as these animals strikingly
reflect people, classes and establishments in our society.
While originally intended to ridicule Stalin’s
regime, the book might very well be talking about our present
situation. If we believe that history repeats itself and that the
lessons we never learn would continue to haunt us, then it should
come to no wonder that we see parallelisms between our current state
and that of the animals’ in the book.
But while the book itself would remain a tragedy
in perpetuity, we who mirror it do not have to suffer the same fate.
Animal Farm is not a lesson in fatalism; it is a challenge to people
to remain constantly vigilant. True, we might suffer for reasons not
necessarily connected with our ethical merits; but then again, as
the former US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can hurt
you without your consent.”
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