Animals

As I was doing some holiday reading, I thought I'd take the liberty of sharing some thoughts I had about the type of writing that I am indulging in.

Animal Farm
George Orwell

I came across this book in a duds bin in Whitcoulls the other day (there was a misprinted page) . I had heard of this book at high school and one time, in a conversation with a good friend mentioning China, I asked her if she knew what Communism was and she answered, "Yes, I've read Animal Farm."

And at the time I was skeptical that a single book (which I found to be quite a slim read) could contain the intricacies of a rather ideal driven political system. What I found after reading it is that it does flatten some of the detail, but all for the purpose of summarising and providing us with a concise satire. The language was simple, yet the ideas were deep if you are brave enough to search for them. Packed with symbolism, one would find it hard to skim past and declare it just a story about a pack of scandalous, unrealistically rendered farm animals.

The drama was light, like an undulating set of hillocks - never too bland, never too high. I think it expresses the seriousness of the message underneath the "story". Although it wouldn't be a book I would use to judge Communism outright, as perhaps you might say such a thing should not be judged but merely discussed, it does offer another viewpoint in an effective form.