George Orwell, Animal Farm

[reddster]

I was told that when George Orwell was researching for the book 'Animal Farm', he read a lot of articles from US newspapers that was deemed 'anti-communist propaganda' What was the reasons George wrote this book?

[Obo]

Good guide to the symbolism in the book here http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/animf.htm or in fact this site has a good break down of the symbolism of both characters and events in the book http://www.novelguide.com/animalfarm/

[Obo]

Just had a look through both of the sites I poted above and apart from the fact that the first appears to be a c & p job on the second neither appears to mention my favourite trivial fact about the book... Who or what does the Raven represent?

[Janetx]

The Raven, Moses, represents the Church.

[Kenzo]

the raven describes sugar candy mountain, a dream place that the working animals aspire to. they all imagine a wonderful world, better than the one here. the pigs get rather annoyed.

[TWINKYGIRL76]

Animal Farm is based on the Russian Revolution and corruption that occured after.
The main characters of the book are based on Russian leaders such as Joseph Starling (Napoleon), Leon Trotsky (Snowball) and Lenin. It is basically about totalitarianism (political system where there is only one party, allows no opposition, controls everything) Even though the animals have errected a sign with rules such as "All animals are equal" the irony is that they are not all equal, as demonstrated by the pigs! Hope this helps.

[TWINKYGIRL76]

Moses is Mr Jone's spy and he is disliked by all the animals. He plays no real part in the book. Orwell considered himself to be an atheist, so I would think it unlikely that Moses (The raven) is based on Moses from the Bible.

[TWINKYGIRL76]

Anybody else any thoughts on this question?

[Kenzo]

is moses a spy?

the pigs didnt like moses, and although he didnt work, they still fed him, orwell used  this character to show how communism exploits religion to calm the oppressed.