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100 Best Novels, Animal Farm, Book, book challenge, book list, George Orwell, novel, Orwell, Reading, Stalin, time 100 best novel
Over the weekend I re-consumed George Orwell’s “Animal Farm“. I really shouldn’t even say it was over the weekend, it was more like an hour on Saturday. It has always been near the top of my top 10 books; ever since being a required read for High School English.
Reliving my youth aside; my admiration for the politically fueled allegory is not something that I’m alone in. It’s just one of those novels that leaves a lasting impression on a reader. For goodness sakes, I even have friends who love George Orwell so much that they are going to name their first-born son Orwell. (It’s better than Apple or Hashtag I suppose.) While I’m not that adoring of Orwell’s work, I will admit that I own the 1954 cartoon adaptation of “Animal Farm” that I force my daughter to watch about once a year.
This book is one of those that I feel, no matter how it’s reviewed or summarized, it always will come up short. In order to truly appreciate the symbolic mirroring that is spun with regards to the Stalin era; one simply has to read it.
One of my favorite part while re-reading this was remembering specific lines as I read. As the commandments are slowly altered in the story; I’d play a mental game of “memory” to see if I could recall the modifiers added to the laws, which I forgot only one. How well can you do without cheating? Can you recall the wording of the last revision?
The original commandments are:
- Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
- Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
- No animal shall wear clothes.
- No animal shall sleep in a bed.
- No animal shall drink alcohol.
- No animal shall kill any other animal.
- All animals are equal.