Animal Farm

When George Orwell (a.k.a. Eric Blair) wrote Animal Farm, the world was catching its breath after several years of war. The novella is a fable in the sense that animals in the book talk and act as though they are human beings. Like Aesop, Orwell was able to pack a lot of meaning into his story.

All commentators explain that the central purpose of Animal Farm is to critique the failure of the Soviet state. Even though he castigates the Soviet version of socialism, Orwell is an argent socialist himself, who believes that the socialism in the Soviet Union was a corruption of Marxist's ideals. However, Orwell believed that socialism was still the answer to the world’s problems of misery and oppression. Yet, even though Orwell did not intend it, Animal Farm is not just a condemnation of the Soviet system of socialism, or even of totalitarianism in its fascistic, capitalistic, or socialistic manifestations. After all, these systems are not forms of civil government, but rather economic systems. What Animal Farm demonstrates is the failure of the political entity called the state. The state as a civil government is unable to offer or to maintain liberty, because the interests of the state are counter to the interests of liberty.