Animal Farm, or, Farmacology: Power is the Drug of Choice for Animals

Before I jump in with talking about Animal Farm, can we please acknowledge that title? I am legitimately proud of that title. Honestly. I literally fist pumped the air after coming up with it. I appreciate puns and witty wordplay, and I can only hope that other internet adventurers are similar. 

Obligatory explanation because my sister told me this joke might not make sense to people: Pharmacology literally translates to the study of drug in Greek, and now it is "the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action" (courtesy of Wikipedia) I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I had to choose between clarity and the integrity of the pun. And I know it's pharmacology and not farmacology- the joke wouldn't have hit home as well if I had used correct spelling. I wanted to make a joke about pharmacology and how religion is the opiate of the masses, but there wasn't much mention of religion in this book so...

I know summer has just started for many people, which means it’s time to scour the newspapers for those lists of new books to pick up this summer. Or, in my case, it means to cross some old ones of my list first, especially when some of them are considered classics. In this case, it was Animal Farm by George Orwell. While many people read it for a high school English class, somehow I slipped through that one. I did, however, have to read A Tale of Two Cities. That was torture.

I am nothing if not a slave to culture, so I decided to cross the classic political satire off that long reading list of mine.

Animal Farm is a thinly veiled social commentary for abuse of power, especially in the cases of fascist and communist dictatorships. I don’t mean thinly veiled as an insult here; Orwell had a point to make and was not going to obscure his references, his characters or his message by writing subtly or complexly. That being said, the reader can easily decipher his meaning and decide if they agree with him.

As someone who disagrees with injustice or taking advantage of people, I was easily angered by the farm injustice and some of the animals. (Hey, I was Orwell’s target audience!) Even more frustrating was that this actually happened and even occurs to this day, but to different degrees and circumstances. It’s a quick read, and if you have an appreciation for classic literature, I would rent or buy this book ASAP. You may want to have the internet handy to look up references, which character means which and situations that the farm occurrences represent. For the sake of clarity, I will include some links to websites that do exactly that, because honestly, summer means no thinking or work. There’s something to be said as holding true to your mantra, isn't there?

1. Spark Notes, because it saves our ass in not only classes but in leisure reading, too, apparently.

2. Someone’s blog on class stratification.

3. A study guide pdf on the entire book- handy! 

Picture on right by chrisoatley on DeviantART, picture on right by John Lee on keebs.com. 

It was a refreshing change of pace to read a classic work of literature with a message and metaphors and symbolism, wasn't it? Well it's not going to happen again. I'll go back to reading my mindless, entertaining novels, thank you very much.