Hey guys, I'm Brittany. Today we are talking all about Animal Farm and I am so excited to share this book with you
You are totally up for the challenge. I completely believe in you
All of these topics will have timed links down in the description box
if you want to skip around, if you want to rewind something or skip ahead to something
So let's jump in
All right, so first thing's first. George Orwell's real name is not George Orwell, that is a pen name
His real name was Eric Blum. In the 1930's Eric became pretty well connected with left leaning political circles
And at that time Fascism was sweeping across Europe
And in 1936 he actually voluntarily leaves England
And went to Spain where he fought in the Spanish Civil War
Eric was fighting on the side of the Communists and the Anarchists
And during this time he became super disillusioned with the Soviet Union and Soviet Communism
He also became pretty disillusioned with revolutions in general
He writes a lot in his diary about how there were these militant armed thugs that would just patrol the streets
And it was total chaos, gang war, and so even though there was all this hope at the beginning for
something positive that would come out of the revolution, it wasn't happening
So he ends up getting shot in the throat
during the war. He lives, but her's totally down for the count so he and his wife
who was also fighting in this war, they go back to England and that's when George Orwell starts writing
in earnest and he pens Animal Farm
Animal Farm is a short little book, it's under 100 pages
If you haven't read it, I would encourage you to. It's a pretty quick read
But it's an allegory so the characters in it - it's mostly talking animals. There's a few people, but it's mostly
talking animals, and these characters all symbolize real life people and groups of people
During the Russian Revolution and the events that followed in terms of the Josef Stalin to power
And the rise of the USSR. Allegories go way back.
They're really old, they're been used for centuries as a way to criticize those in power
especially if it's really dangerous for you to be overtly critical of those in power or if
there's censorship. George Orwell had a really tough time getting this book published.
No one would publish it. He was trying to get it published during World War II
So today in 2017 we're used to thinking of the UK and the US and pretty much all of the NATO countries
being very much at odds with the USSR and modern day Russia but during World War II that was not the case
Nazi Fascism was seen as the great threat to all of civilization pretty much as far as the UK was concerned
And politics was seen as this spectrum from right to left where over here on the right was - this is your left -
We'll go with it! So over here on the one side
was Nazi Fascism and then all the way over on the other side
was the Communist USSR. They were seen as polar opposites.
And because the UK was at war with Nazi Fascism being critical of this power that was sort of seen as balancing
out this fascist forces over here was a bit taboo of a thing to do
So Orwell wrote this book that's super critical of the USSR and he goes to his typical friends
who own publishing companies that are the main left-leaning publishers
And they're like... No we're not publishing this book!
So with some reluctance George Orwell goes to the premiere right leaning publishing company in the UK