Ms. Erin Tarbuck (etarbuck@vsb.bc.ca) English Language Arts 10 Name: Block: Animal Farm Notes George Orwell (1903 1950) George Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair, later adopting his pen name. He grew up in India, and attended boarding school in Britain from the age of eight years. He did not attend university, and worked with the Indian IMperial Police in Burma. This experience was formative for him, as he began to align himself with the oppressed Burmese, more so than the British Empire. His poor health forced him to return home to England, where he began to write. Historical Background: The Russian Revolution In early 1900s, The Russian Czar Nicholas II faced a discontented populace. The Russian People, while freed from serfdom in the 1860s, still struggled to survive. In 1917, during WW1, the Russian Revolution occurred. Czar Nicholas was overthrown, and the Bolshevik (revolutionary) leadership took over. Their leader, Lenin, died in 1924. His friends, Stalin and Trotsky struggled for power, with Stalin ultimately winning. He permanently exiled Trotsky. Animal Farm Historical Figure Farmer Jones Czar of Russia The Pigs The Bolsheviks Major Marx/Lenin Napoleon Stalin Snowball Trotsky Boxer The working class Mollie White Russians Moses Catholic/Orthodox Church Squealer Soviet propagandists Napoleon s dogs Secret Police Pilkington England/Churchill Frederick Hitler Minimus Mayakovsky (poet) Whymper Western businessmen Wild animals The peasants The Novel: Animal Farm 1 2 3 Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a fable, satire and allegory of the creation and running of the Soviet Union. He termed it a Fairy Story. During world war II, the Soviet Union (USSR) was an ally of Britain, and 4 Orwell struggled to find a publisher for his novel. People wanted to believe in the experiment of socialism 5 and communism that was the USSR; Orwell s book was seen as a prematurely negative dismissal of it. The 6 7 public was not willing to see the authoritarianism or fascism present in the USSR. 1 Fable : a short tale to teach a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters 2 Satire : a literary form where vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement 3 Allegory: a story that carries two meanings; one being literal, and one being figurative, or symbolic 4 Socialism : an economic system characterized by social ownership or control of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy 5 Communism: a social /political or economic ideology that aims to create a classless, moneyless, stateless and revolutionary socialist society where the people own the means of production 6 Authoritarianism: social organization characterized by submission to authority; usually opposed to individualism and democracy 7 Fascism: a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology ; accomplished through personal commitment to national goals; mobilizes nation s masses through discipline, indoctrination, physical education, and eugenics.
Animal Farm Reading Schedule Week 1: Chapters 1 4 Week 2: Chapters 5 7 Week 3: Chapters 8 10 Propaganda Propaganda is the use of information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. Propaganda usually functions based on one of the three basic forms of appeal: Ethos: appeals to audience s ethics Pathos: appeals to audience s emotions Logos: appeals to audience s logic Some key quotes from Politics and Language by George Orwell Quote 1: In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this: While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement. Quote 2: But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Quote 3: But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases: 1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. 2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. 3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. 5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. 6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous. These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in these five specimens at the beginning of this article.
Orwell s Politics and Language Discussion Questions 1. What is Euphemism? Why does Orwell oppose its use? 2. Can language corrupt thought? If yes, then how, and where? 3. Look up active and passive voice in your grammar handout. Why do you think Orwell wants writers to avoid the passive voice? What information is being obscured by the passive voice? 4. How does the italicized sample Orwell uses in his text break his rules for writing? 5. Do you think his rules are still valid today? Why, or why not? 6. Where have you seen examples of Orwell s rules being violated?
Animal Farm Questions Chapters 1 4: Knowledge and Comprehension (complete these before class, please) 1. What are the commandments Major gives the animals? Can you think of ways each of them could be considered a vice? 2. What causes the animals to finally rebel against Mr. Jones and his four farmhands? 3. What do the animals do when the humans leave the farm? 4. What do the animals do about the farmhouse? 5. What difference between the pigs and the other animals develop in chapters 3 & 4? Analysis: 6. What is the message of the anthem Beasts of England? What does it appeal to in terms of ethos, pathos, or logos? 7. Whose pet is Moses? Why don t the pigs like his stories about Sugarcandy Mountain? 8. Why, and how is Squealer able to convince the other animals to accept whatever Napoleon decides? Give examples of things he says that appeal to ethos, to logos, and to pathos. Animal Farm Questions Chapters 5 7: Knowledge and Comprehension (complete these before class, please) 1. What changes have been made in the weekly meetings over the last year? 2. What changes does Napoleon make after his dogs chase Snowball off the farm? 3. How is the windmill destroyed? Why does Napoleon blame Snowball, and then insist it be rebuilt? 4. What is the reaction of the hens when their eggs are sold? What is the reasoning to sell the eggs? Analysis: 5. Why does Mollie run away from the farm?
6. Why don t the other animals protest Napoleon s decisions? 7. Why does Napoleon decide to engage in trade with neighboring farms? How do the animals react to this? Evaluation 8. Explain the windmill controversy from Snowball s point of view, and then Napoleon s. 9. Compare the differences in how the animals now arrange themselves (ch. 5) when they enter the barn to receive their orders as compared to the description in Chapter I. 10. What is the importance of the dogs accompanying Squealer when he comes to talk to the animals? 11. Why does Napoleon order the animals to stop singing Beasts of England? Creativity 12. How do you imagine things would be different if Snowball had remained on the farm? Or, would they be the same? Animal Farm Discussion Questions Chapters 8 10: Knowledge and Comprehension (complete these before class, please) 1. What purpose is served by the production figures Squealer reads to the animals? 2. The Animals celebrate a victory, but at what cost? 3. What happens to Boxer? How do the animals react? 4. What are the living conditions for all the animals aside from the dogs and pigs?
5. In chapter 10, what changes have the years brought to the farm? 6. How do the animals feel about their social order? 7. What drastic actions do the pigs use to shatter the animals complacency? 8. All seven commandments are erased. What is the new commandment and how has it been true from the beginning? 9. At the conference with neighboring farmers, what new changes does Napoleon point out? Analysis: 10. How is Napoleon becoming more and more like a typical dictator? 11. What makes the battle against Frederick s men different from the Battle of the Cowshed? 12. Describe the whisky incident. Why would Orwell make this scene somewhat humorous? 13. Why are the animals so easily fooled, even when they find Squealer with a ladder and white paint beside the barn at night? 14. What kind of person does Benjamin remind you of? Evaluation 15. How does Orwell make fun of bureaucracy? 16. At the beginning of our encounter, you were asked if you thought that language could corrupt thought. Has your answer changed?