I fell in love with this book so quickly
and fell out of love just as fast.
The second half of the book was clunky and heavy handed. I would have LOVED this piece if Orwell stuck with the original plot!! I know, Orwell is known for his social commentary, I expected it, however, in this instance, it was underwhelming and tactless. The book got more and more boring as it continued because the entire plot needlessly fell apart so he could make a few points.
The topics and takeaways of the book, which Orwell forced fed me are: corruption, tyranny, dangers of poor education,determinants of conformity and upholding collective illusions (shoutout Todd Rose,) good people are treated like shit and forgotten under bad people, and finally, the leaders of our society are hypocritical, self serving, increasingly cruel, animals (more specifically,) pigs. But in making the point of the extremity of tyranny, he abandoned any strong call to action which I think, was a weaker trade off.
I’m just disappointed because I’ve read 1984 and I know that Orwell is an incredible writer and brilliant thinker so he definitely could have made all the points about society better and more subtly incorporated into the plot; like how dope would it have been if the takeaway was so subtle it’s understandable to overlook it. If he made the actions of the animals in the farm less drastic and more real, he would draw an actually good, believable metaphor between the animals and people in society. That way, the book would force the reader to do work and see the effects of their conformity. It would require the reader to step back, look objectively, and draw their own conclusions to understand the level of distortion and the relation to real life in a more impactful way.
But no, at the end of the novel, a pig named Napoleon literally wore leather stockings, walking around on two legs with a whip, a smoking pipe, and drunk on whiskey.
Everything was so predictable and boring after the halfway mark.
by RustyBedframe