Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, China

Academic Year 2017-2018(2nd Semester)

English Class (Reading & Writing Grade C)
17B228 Fong Tsz Ching

Book Report 2

Title: Animal Farm

Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Longman (0-582-27524-5)

Introduction & Book Summary

George Orwell is an Indian born British reporter and writer. Animal Farm is in the much lighter form
of a story about animals. It is the story of a revolution which goes wrong, based on the Russian
revolution and Joseph Stalin’s use of power. The overall message is that man’s desire for power
makes a classless society impossible. Each of the animals in the story represent a public figure or a
particular type of person in real life. The pigs, who can read and write and organize the other animals,
are the Bolshevik intellectuals; Napoleon is Stalin and Snowball is Trotsky. The working classes are
represented by the uncomplaining old horse, Boxer.
At the beginning of the book, a group of farm animals chase off the human masters who have been
treating them so badly and set up a new society of equals. This society has great ideals, aiming to
work for the improved conditions of all animals, and a set of seven commandments are prepared by
which they will all try to live. The story describes how these ideals gradually disappear, and the
events that then follow.

Comment and Reflections

The main idea of the book can be summarized in one quote “All animals are equal, but some are
more equal than the others”. As the book was first published in 1945, right after the end of the
Second World War. The cold war begins, the capitalist world was afraid of the rise of the communist
camp lead by the Soviet Union. Animal Farm simply reflects such sentiment share among western
world.

After reading the book, we may simply ask a series of questions. “Is communism only an Utopia?”,
“Can Communism reach its ideal and create an equal world”, “Any theoretical problem leads to the
unsuccessful implementation of communism?
In order to answer the above questions. We may have to review the original ideas of communism.
The original texts by Karl Marx may help. Karl Marx was an British Political Economist, his writing

《Das Capital》(資本論) was first published in 1867 and soon become an prominent classics in

Political Economy. The basic ideas of Marx’s Communism was coming from Marx’s observation on
the 19th century Britain. The industrial revolution creates economic boom but at the same time cause
serious exploitation to the working class, leading to an extremely unfair society. Marx advocates
working class should be united together to rebel to such exploitation and creating a new institution
and bring the whole society to another historical period, namely Socialist stage.

The idea of Marx was simply great. However, from the historical view point, especially the example
from the Soviet Union, we may see that the newly established socialist government was not fully
represent the working class. The socialist intellects became another version of the old capitalists.

They control the production information and tool (生產 資料與生產工具) in another form. And the

planned economy system finally lead to loss of incentive and motivation.

The problem is that. The socialist idea is great. However, Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
tends to absolute corrupt. In the example of the Soviet Union, the power was over centralized to the
government and leads to an failure at the end.

Put it into today China’s text. We should be glad George Orwell’s prediction does not happen in our
country. The reason is due to our government is trying to reform itself and developed a set of rules
and regulations to monitor and improve the institution. Such reforms make the country developed its
own road of socialism, namely socialism with Chinese Characteristics, which make our country
become an successful model of socialist country.