George Orwell+Animal Farm, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica George Orwell+Animal Farm e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! G E O R G E O R W E L L (1903-1950) Life and works Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair and he was born in India and he was the son of a minor colonial official. As a small child, he was taken to England by his mother and he was educated at Eton in a private school. There he began to develop an independent- minded personality and professed atheism and socialism. He decided to serve in Burma and, back in London, he started a social experiment: he decided to live as the poor did. In this way, he directly experienced poverty and learned how institutions for the poor worked. After a period in Paris, he decided to begin publishing his works with the pseudonym of George Orwell. He called himself “George” because he thought it was a typical English name and “Orwell” because of the name of a river he was fond of. In Down and out in Paris and London he described his experience among the poor; in Burmese Days he wrote about his experience in the colonial service. He went to Catalonia to report on the Spanish Civil War (he supported the right side and he becomes a socialist) and he wrote In Homage to Catalonia. When the Second World War broke out, he moved to London and he joined the BBC, broadcasting cultural and political events to India. In this period he also wrote his most important works: • The Animal Farm, in 1944-45 • 1984, that describes a futuristic world, written in 1948 and published in 1949. The artist’s development Orwell had a deep understanding of the English character, of its tolerance, its dislike for abstract theories and insistence on common sense and fair play. On the other hand, thanks to his various experiences abroad, he could see his country from the outside and judge its strengths and weaknesses. Orwell’s life and work were marked by the conflict between his middle class background and education and his emotional identification with the working class. According to him, the writer has a social function: the artist has to give a message, to interpret reality... His desire to inform, to reveal facts and draw conclusions from them, led him to believe that writing interpreted reality and therefore served a useful social function. Social themes Orwell was influenced by Dickens in the choice of social themes and the use of realistic and factual language. He insisted on tolerance, justice and decency in human relationships, and warned against the increasing artificiality of urban civilisation. Above all, he presented a devastating critique of totalitarianism. ANIMAL FARM “Animal Farm” was written after the purge trials of 1930s, when leading soviet personalities and members of the army confessed publicly all sorts of crimes against the state and were sent to labour camps or shot. The man behind all this was Stalin. Orwell’s indignation to these events caused him to write Animal Farm. In chapter 7, the confessions and executions imposed by Napoleon are a clear reference to these events. This novel can be considered: 1) an ALLEGORY: because each animal represents a character of the Russian Revolution. The same thing happen with the events. 2) a FABLE: because animals are protagonists and there’s a moral message; 3) a SATIRICAL WORK: because with this work Orwell wants to attack and criticise what happened in Russia after the Revolution (the ideas of the Revolution were betrayed). But he criticises not only the Russian Revolution, but revolutions in general (ex. Name “Napoleon”, French Revolution). He wanted also to criticise men, that are greedy for power and selfish. 4) an ANTI-UTOPIA/ DYSTOPIA: because he describes a pessimistic/negative world. The anti-utopia is the reversal of a conventional utopia *. Its aim is to promote the creation of a better society (and world) by presenting a negative society as terrible. An anti-utopian novel also tends to exaggerate tendencies already present in a society and to portray a nightmarish vision of the future. * Contrariwise, the utopia id the description of a perfect world/community. The model of all utopias was Plato with “The republic”, but it was Thomas Moore that coined this expression with his work “Utopia”, written in Latin. • Muriel: The goat who helps Clover to read the changes in the Commandments. She may represent the working-class minority who understand but is not strong enough to oppose the government SNOWBALL NAPOLEON He wants innovation, improvements (ex. The windmill) and he spread revolutionary ideas ↓ It stands for Trotsky (industrialisation) He wants food production and to buy more firearms, more weapons ↓ It stands for Stalin (agriculture) The different attitudes that Napoleon had towards his neighbors stands for the different attitudes of Stalin towards the French and the English on the one hand and the Germans on the other. Napoleon trades with Frederick just as Stalin sided with Hitler in 1949. Of course, Animal Farm is deceived by Frederick ( = Hitler ) and his attack on the farm stands for Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Whenever something went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. The pigs said he was in league with Mr. Jones from the beginning: he was a traitor, a secret agent. He had organised the Battle of Cowshed with Mr. Jones and he was hiding at Pinchfield, he was a scapegoat. The visit Of Pilkington and the other farmers in chapter 10 stands for the Teheran Conference, a meeting between the leaders of the UK (Churchill); of the US (Roosevelt) and of Russia. During this conference they discussed what to do in Europe after the war. THE USE OF IRONY One of the things which makes Animal Farm effective is the use of irony. The ironic structure of the book has two main centers of force and they both have to do with the wiping out of the memories of the animals. 1. manipulation of their attitudes with Snowball (from a hero to a spy); 2. changing of the 7 Commandments throughout the story. As the book hoes on, the irony becomes less comic, more pathetic and, in the last chapter, it becomes dark. What makes the irony savage is that the animals still can not understand since they are victims of merciless calculation. THEMES 1. EXPOSURE OF THE FAILURE OF ALL REVOLUTIONS ↳ they fail to achieve the expectations of the promoters 2. POWER CORRUPTS ↳ The pigs demonstrate it: they become the oppressors and are similar to men both in the behavior and physical appearance. 3. SUBVERSION OF THRUTH AND MANIPULATION OF INFORMATION ↳ Since the only source of information the animals have is the pigs, with their brilliant talker, Squealer, in time the animals come to believe what they are told and the history is changed. (the total control of information and rearrangement of history). 4. TOTALITARIANISM ↳ Orwell criticized totalitarianism, since he believed in justice, liberty, brotherhood…