Animal Farm Essays

Unlikely fan

In its final issue, the News of the World made much of a 1946 George Orwell essay in which the great writer had namechecked it. But was the Animal Farm author really an admirer of the paper?

History was always going to play a major part in the News of the World's final issue. With few big stories, past glories were to the fore, including the paper's first ever front page from 1 October 1843.

On page three, the paper opted for a farewell editorial. It began with a quote from George Orwell - used as a character witness for the paper - repeating the opening of his famous essay Decline of the English Murder.

"It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose and open the News of the World."

The News of the World editorial said of Orwell's words: "They were written in 1946 but they have been the sentiments of most of the nation for well over a century and a half as this astonishing paper became part of the fabric of Britain, as central to Sunday as a roast dinner."

But was that what Orwell was really saying? The blogger and communications expert Max Atkinson says they have linked the great writer to some dubious claims. "Are they part of the fabric of Britain? No! As central to Sunday as roast dinner? No! This is self aggrandising, megalomaniac, boastful and untrue stuff."

Orwell was interested in the lives of the working class. But while the essay depicts the quintessential lazy Sunday, it also satirises the prurience that newspapers - the News of the World is the only one mentioned by name - encourage.

"In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?" the essay reads. "Naturally, about a murder." Orwell goes on to relate how these murders are "re-hashed over and over again by the Sunday papers".

Atkinson remembers the paper even in the late 1950s as being too racy for him to be allowed to read at boarding school. "In those days they'd send stringers around to the local Crown Courts to report on the local sex cases. They were constantly talking about people having carnal knowledge with under-age girls."

For him, Orwell's essay is far from complimentary to the News of the World. "It doesn't sound to me as though the quote they used was Orwell doing a top reader recommends. They're misrepresenting Orwell to suggest he's a fan of the paper.

Animal Farm Essay How can i write thesis for this topic, discuss ...

7.All animals are equal.

The Seven Commandments are violated almost as soon as they are written. When gathering in the harvest, the pigs take control: "With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume the leadership". Orwell here acknowledges that humans are not equal and that those who are more talented will through Darwinian selection rise above those who are less able. Through the Seven Commandments the community is focused outwards according to them once man (Capitalism) is removed then the animals (the workers) will be in a state of utopia. The tenets of the society do not set down in enough detail exactly how this period of utopia will function once it is arrived at. Above all, Orwell’s novel highlights a fact made crushingly obvious by the fall of Communism in the nineteen nineties: that man cannot exist without leadership. That a community which tries to rule itself from within will fall prey to the ambition of men who bend the tenets of the society to serve their own will.

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Essays

CliffsNotes on Orwell's Animal Farm

The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters, George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945

Critical essays on George Orwell

Animal Farm: The Teacher's Companion