Full Title: Animal Farm - A Fairy Story
When Written: 1944-45
Where Written: England
When Published: 1945
Literary Period: Modernism
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
LitCharts, 2017
Animal Farm, anti-utopian satire by George Orwell published in 1945. One of Orwell’s finest works, it is a political fable based on the events of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution and the betrayal of the cause by Joseph Stalin. The book concerns a group of barnyard animals who overthrow and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the animals’ intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution. Concluding that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” (with its addendum to the animals’ seventh commandment: “All animals are equal”), the pigs form a dictatorship even more oppressive and heartless than that of their former human masters.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2017
Rating: E Production Year: 2014 Duration: 26:15
Description: This series of four clips explores the context, characters, themes and writing style of Orwell's popular classic. Led by an engaging presenter with a touch of dark humour.
Rating: PG Production Year: 1999 Duration: 51:35
Description: The animals of a farm successfully revolt against its human owner, only to slide into a more brutal tyranny among themselves.
Rating: G Production Year: 1999 Duration: 1:27:33
Description: Based on the novel by George Orwell. Starring Pete Postlethwaite and with creature effects by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Barnyard animals mount a revolution, oust their cruel farmer and turn the farm into a collective.
George Orwell, pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, (born June 25, 1903, Motihari, Bengal, India—died January 21, 1950, London, England), English novelist, essayist, and critic famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), the latter a profound anti-utopian novel that examines the dangers of totalitarian rule.
George Orwell 2017. Britannica School.
Orwell, George [Image]. Encyclopædia Britannica. BBC Copyright
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