Animal Farm, 3

I read Animal Farm a couple of moths ago, and I felt that my opinion was overdue, but I hadn’t had the time to write it down and it wasn’t until the past week that I spent long hours in airports when I had just the much needed time…

......

Though Animal Farm is George's Orwell criticism of the abuse of power and use of patriotism-propaganda committed in Russia during the early years of the revolution in name of “egalitarianism”, the tale depicted in Orwell’s book is still much relevant.

Orwell makes an excellent job identifying actions that could make a well intended idea go wrong: The use of subjective numbers and figures, personification of the physical space, change of the law to legalize actions previously considered illegal, the use of an external (usually subjective) enemy, cuts that directly affect the well being of citizens (education, health) in order to increase military expenditures, etc. These actions have seen not only in Russia but they are still happening and now more close to home.

I believe Animal Farm’s open ending is Orwell’s way to tell us that, its citizens’ responsibility to keep checks and balances on power and that the official story is not enough. It doesn’t matter if the tag line of the policy is "spread democracy", "fight the imperio", "keep our nuclear deterrent", "4 good 2 bad"...... Democracy is only possible when there is a real commitment from their participants.