Author Bio

Full Name: Eric Arthur Blair

Pen Name: George Orwell
Date of Birth: 1903
Place of Birth: Motihari, India
Date of Death: 1950
Brief Life Story: Eric Blair was born and spent his youth in India. He was educated at Eton in England.
From 1922-27 he served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Through his autobiographical work
about poverty in London (Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933), his experiences in colonial
Burma (Burmese Days, 1934) and in the Spanish Civil War (Homage to Catalonia, 1938), and the
plight of unemployed coal miners in England (The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), Blair (who wrote under
the name George Orwell) exposed and critiqued the human tendency to oppress others politically,
economically, and physically. Orwell particularly hated totalitarianism, and his most famous novels,
Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), are profound condemnations of totalitarian regimes. Orwell died
at the age of 47 after failing to treat a lung ailment.
Key Facts
Full Title: Animal Farm - A Fairy Story
Genre: Novel / Fairy Tale / Allegory
Setting: A farm somewhere in England in the first half of the 20th century
Climax: The pigs appear standing upright and the sheep bleat "Four legs good, two legs better!"
Antagonist: Napoleon
Point of View: Third person omniscient
Historical and Literary Context
When Written: 1944-45
Where Written: England
When Published: 1945
Literary Period: Modernism
Related Literary Works: Orwell subtitled Animal Farm "A Fairy Story." Characters in fairy tales tend
to be two-dimensional stereotypes used to reveal some broad observation about life. As the critic C.M.
Wodehouse wrote in a piece on Animal Farm in 1954, a fairy tale has no moral. It simply says, "Life is
like thattake it or leave it." Animal Farm uses the format of a fairy tale to expose the evils of
totalitarian exploitation. Rather than attack totalitarianism directly, the book shows its offenses plainly
and clearly and lets the reader deduce the dangers posed by totalitarian governments. The literary work
most often mentioned alongside Animal Farm is 1984, another Orwell novel. 1984, published in 1949,
envisions a future in which a dictatorship monitors and controls the actions of all of its citizens. Like
Animal Farm, 1984 depicted the horrific constraints that totalitarian governments could impose on
human freedom.
Related Historical Events: In 1917, two successive revolutions rocked Russia and the world. The first
revolution overthrew the Russian Monarchy (the Tsar) and the second established the USSR, the
world's first Communist state. Over the next thirty years the Soviet government descended into a
totalitarian regime that used and manipulated socialist ideas of equality among the working class to
oppress its people and maintain power. Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and the
Communist Soviet Union. Many of the animal characters in Animal Farm have direct correlations to
figures or institutions in the Soviet Union.

http://es.scribd.com/doc/27690339/Granja-de-Animales-Resumen-de-Aaas

animal farm summary

Old Major, the old boar on the Manor Farm, calls the animals on the farm for a meeting, where he compares
the humans to parasites, 3 days later he dies. Two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and
turn his dream into a reality. The Seven Commandments of Animalism are written on the wall of a barn. The
most important one stating that all animals are equal. All the animals work, but the workhorse, Boxer, does
more work than others. Napoleon takes the pups from the farm dogs and trains them privately. When Mr.
Jones tries retaking the farm, the animals defeat him at what they call the "Battle of the Cowshed." Napoleon
and Snowball struggle for leadership. Napoleon has his dogs chase Snowball away. The animals work harder
with the promise of easier lives with the windmill. After a violent storm, the animals find the windmill they
constructed destroyed. "No animal shall drink alcohol" is changed to "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess"
when the pigs discover the farmer's whisky. Mr. Frederick, one of the neighbouring farmers, swindles Napoleon
by buying old wood with forged money, and then attacks the farm, using blasting powder to blow up the
restored windmill. Boxer continues working harder and harder, until he collapses while working on the
windmill. Napoleon sends for a van to take Boxer to the veterinarian. Benjamin the donkey, who "could read as
well as any pig", [4] notices that the van belongs to a Horse Slaughterer. Years pass, and the pigs learn to walk
upright, carry whips, and wear clothes. The animals realize that the faces of the pigs look like the faces of
humans and no one can tell the difference between them.

Animal Farm by George Orwell opens with the aged and dying Pig, Old Major, as he gives a an
impassioned speech to the other animals of the farm imploring them to reject the injustice forced upon
them by the humans. He rallies the other beasts by discussing a dream he has of a perfect utopia for
animals, one in which they were all free from the tyranny of humans and had enough to eat. He teaches
the animals a song called Beasts of England which they all sing with patriotic fervor until the owner
of the farm, Mr. Jones, fires his gun into the air. Soon after this, Old Major dies and the animals begin
to organize according to the dead boars wishes, the first of which is to take control of the farm away
from Mr. Jones. Two pigs become main characters in Animal Farm by George Orwell, Napoleon and
Snowball. With the help of the skilled speaker-pig Squealer, they come up with a philosophy called
Animalism which seeks to unite all of the animals under their shared status as animals and keep them
loyal to each other.
In this section of the plot of Animal Farm by George Orwell, they begin calling each other
comrade and even though it is hard for some of them to completely the principles of the new order,
most of the animals adopt this new way of life. One day, Mr. Jones gets drunk after losing some of his
money in a legal battle and the animals spring on the opportunity to take control of the farm. By the end
of the short revolution, the animals have destroyed the old vestiges of their bondage and now free to
live the happy life Old Major predicted they would. They sing Beasts of England and are generally
ecstatic for the next few days. They make plans to keep the farmhouse as a museum and the pigs, who
have taught themselves to read, erase the words Manor Farm from the main farm building and write
Animal Farm in its place. Also on the barn are painted the seven commandments of animalism which
basically amount to pro-animal laws. It is at this point that Snowball the pig seems to be taking over
while Napoleon, another leader, tries to undermine him.
Things go smoothly for animals throughout the summer and they find new more efficiently ways of
doing things. The animals must work hard but their patriotism keeps them fresh and invigorated for the
most partaside from the exceptions of Mollie the vain horse and Benjamin the donkey. Boxer does a
majority of the heavy work and is a idol to all animals to keep plugging. The animals have several
ceremonies to honor themselves and their newfound freedom and have even devised a flag. Despite the
successes, Snowball and Napoleon are always at odds. For instance, Snowball proposes a series of
proactive proposals, including teaching all the animals how to read and for those who couldnt catch on
to it enough to read the commandments, he simply teaches that four legs good, two legs bad.
Meanwhile, Napoleon is engaging in his own plans He adopts newborn puppies saying he will train
them to be good subjects, while in fact he is turning them to his side. Small tensions begin to arise such
as the fact that the pigs get all of the milk and apples, which Squealer defends by saying the pigs need
to think properly. It is clear that there are larger class lines being drawn and that the issue of class in
Animal Farm will be one of the most prominent themes.

There are rumors circulating that farmer Jones is attempting to discredit and destroy the progress made
at Animal Farm and he is uniting with the owners of neighboring farms. Aside from this distant tension,
the problems between Snowball and Napoleon grow and come to a head when Snowball announces his
plans to build a windmill. Napoleon storms off and discredits the plan and this time, he is not alone.
The puppies he raised are now vicious dogs and thus Napoleon has something of a police force on his
side. He overthrows Snowball and takes on the windmill project himself, even though he once said he
didnt like the idea. He makes the animals work at a fast pace to complete the project and with the
skillful rhetorical manipulation of Squealer, keeps the other animals more or less in line.
To make matters worse, Napoleon has begun to hire outside human help, a violation of one of the
central commandments. Again, Squealer smoothes all of this over with his words. Unfortunately, a
storm comes and knocks over what was built of the windmill and the animals must work throughout the
winter to rebuild it. In order to unite all the animals under a common enemy, he spreads rumors about
how the now exiled Snowball knocked over the windmill. All throughout the winter, the animals work
harder and harder in increasingly miserable conditions while Napoleon becomes almost completely
human, drinking alcohol, sleeping in a bed, and associating with humans. The hardest and most loyal
worker on the farm, Boxer the horse, dies and a cart from the glue factory comes to get him, thus
implicating Napoleon. After this point, the pigs realize one day that they cannot tell the pigs from the
humans and vice versa.

The theme of Animal Farm is not difficult to understand. Orwell intended to criticize the communist
regime he saw sweeping through Russia and spreading to Europe and even the United States. Though
he agreed with many Marxist principles, Orwell was unable to accept the communist interpretation of
socialism because he saw many similarities between the communist governments and the previous
czarist regimes in old Russia. Communism, he thought, was inherently hypocritical.
In his self-proclaimed "fairy-story," Orwell uses his allegorical farm to symbolize the communist
system. Though the original intention of overthrowing Mr. Jones (who represents the Czars), is not
inherently evil in itself, Napoleon's subsequent adoption of nearly all of Mr. Jones' principles and harsh
mistreatment of the animals proves to the reader that indeed communism is not equality, but just
another form of inequality. The pigs and dogs take most of the power for themselves, thinking that
they are the best administrators of government. Eventually the power corrupts them, and they turn on
their fellow animals, eliminating competitors through propaganda and bloodshed. This is of course a
reference to Stalin, who murdered many of his own people in order to maintain his dictatorship of
Russia.
Thanks in part to Animal Farm, much of the Western world finally realized the danger of communism.
Soon a Cold War began between the world's greatest superpowers- the Soviet Union and the United
States. In the end, America would prove that capitalism and democracy could outlive a system of
government-mandated equality.