Critical Essay | Critical Review by Times Literary Supplement

Critical Review by Times Literary Supplement

SOURCE: Review of Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Times Literary Supplement (25 August 1945): 401.

In the following review, the reviewer considers Orwell's views on revolution and dictatorship as expressed in Animal Farm.

Animals, as Swift well knew, make admirable interpreters of the satiric intention, and Mr. George Orwell has turned his farm into a persuasive demonstration of the peculiar trick the whip wrested from the hands of a tyrant has of turning itself into a lash of scorpions and attaching itself to the new authority. The animals are naturally pleased with themselves when they rise in revolutionary fervour and chase the drunken farmer off his own land, and their enthusiasm survives the prospect of the labour and discipline that lie before them if the farm is to be properly worked. From the first, however, there are inequalities of brain and muscle, and the pigs gradually assume the intellectual leadership....
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