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Animal Farm
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$ 7.79
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$ 9.99 |
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$ 2.20 (22%) |
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| Item Number |
424132 |
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Item Description...
Overview
Featuring a new preface, this classic satire on totalitarianism in which farm animals overthrow their human owner and set up their own government is once again brought to life for a new generation of readers. Reissue.
Publishers Description
revisit Orwells classic satire Animal Farm
As ferociously fresh as it was more than a half century ago, this remarkable allegory of a downtrodden society of overworked, mistreated animals and their quest to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality is one of the most scathing satires ever published. As readers witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, they begin to recognize the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organizationand in the most charismatic leaders, the souls of the cruelest oppressors. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 139
Dimensions: Length: 0.25" Width: 4.25" Height: 7.25"
Weight: 0.25 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Apr 1, 1996
Publisher Penguin Group USA
ISBN 0451526341
EAN 9780451526342
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Availability 1786 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 03:10.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Johnson City, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Totalitarianism totally today Jan 30, 2010 |
More than half century is gone since George Orwell depicted with 1984" a frightening picture of a totalitarian regime of oppression of all human individuality and freedom and absolute control. Principally he has only transcribed from reality, because the dictatorships of terror existed already: Nazi-Germany, Sowjetunion, Mao-China, GDR, Northern Korea and others. A better description in literary form is not thinkable! That`s all old hat? Not at all!
Orwell is about advising against mechanisms which lead to such slavery of people. And these mechanisms are still going, even with us. He wants that everybody develops a feeling in order to become able to stop such wrong developments. No wonder that this book was on the black list of many dictatorships. Why? A dog that is hit will bark! But we are all hit since in this time of a progressing media age the ideal presuppositions for the complete exertion of influence and control of people are given. In totalitarian regimes of today it is for example often practise to block websites, so that only certain information currents are available. Talking about opinion-forming. That is to say the advantages of linking ways of information in our days can be reversed at any time to a disadvantage. You believe what a majority says is right, because it is comfortable.
When Orwell wrote 1984" he thought of the Sowjetunion, but his observations of human psyche have universal validity. What he describes is the ideal type of a totalitarian dictatorship that comes automatically from the misleading human will of self-realization, being often enough wishful thinking that the paradise could be ordered on Earth, thanks to the human capability. This has nothing to do with prophecy when Orwell writes this. It is nothing than self-observation and self-realization of any reasonable human.
In 1984", similar to the Sowjetunion or the GDR or Cuba, there is a striking economy of scarcity which is being denied with the help of propaganda. Hence the ministry of economics is for Orwell the "ministry of abundance". This is a mark of totalitarian systems, that they misuse the language, twist everything, blackmail opponents and let them disappear when they get them. All for the alleged welfare of the community. Everybody understands the proper insanity but all surrender to the pressure and take part in the game. Reality sense is no longer needed, it dwindles ever more and the reversion to reason and to sustainable values is getting more and more difficult. "Why do you accuse me of not having unlocked the door?" is the question of the concentration-camp guard who stands in front of the court because the prisoners perished in the locked building. "I have not had an order to open it!"
At first one agrees with the lie until on is able to live under it by constant use. Who does not remember the propaganda of the Nazis about worthless lives and alike to praise man on one side as superior masters and at the same time devalue man by racism. That is always the same, self-elevation leads to fall. So much for ideologies where after man himself determines what is good and bad. In so far Orwell draws not the last necessary conclusions, that man cannot find truth in himself. Hardly he seems to have found it, at once it is turning destructively against him as is apparent in his "Animal farm".
Orwell says clearly in "1984" what is unjust. But, whence the individual freedom and self-determination of man should come when they cannot be given naturally, he is not able to say.
It is lost somewhere in the fog of humanistic wisdom which are always under suspicion of being misused as helpers for something else. Already the Bible warned: "woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who make out of darkness light and out of light darkness". Well, but how to avoid the evil?
It would be wrong to point at totalitarian systems and think that this could not happen to a democracy. Orwell knew about the fragility and sensibility of all man made power structures which have those above and those below. He knew that the so called free West could quickly slide into Totalitarianism. In Germany that happened very quickly. It is a deception tp assume that it would be different somewhere else. It was visible that a high culture could not withstand. And today? Sceptics discover also in our society the beginning of limitations of freedoms and of the misuse of information, even when this happens subtly. For example somebody who behaves like a Christian is in our days quickly branded as a fundamentalist or even thrown into the same pot with Islamists. Because of the relativism of today which regards as only truth that there is no binding truth it is ignored that exactly the Christians combine the notion of truth tightly to the notion of individual freedom, whereas this is not the case in Islam, because Islam has a political claim of power exertion.
It is true that Orwell makes clear that the reversal of the values goes together with the reversal of the words. "War and peace" is exchangeable with "just war". Sand this process is starting in the small, with verbal persecution and it is ending in the worst case with Holocaust. At first you are eliminated in words and then with all consequences. Marxism-Leninism possessed the impunity to call itself scientific knowledge. We laugh about it. But what about today? We have an extended faith in science. Today even the former marxists know that they were wrong. We have seen it a hundred of times what happens when man takes himself as last measure. His self-redemption programs are sentenced to failure. One day it will also be put an end to the personal freedom. Orwells book should be a warning. "1984" is one of the few books which everybody should have read. And it holds its actuality.
| | | | A Book Written Perfectly Dec 6, 2009 |
| After reading this book, I was shocked on how well this book was written. I first thought this book was going to be lame and boring like my last book I read for my last report. After reading barley half of the book I got so intrested in it that I couldn't put the book down till my eyes got heavy and I had to fall asleep. This story was also a bit odd at first too, took me a couple of tries until I finaly got intrested. Overall, the story and the meaning of the story was written to perfection. I have and always will recomend this book to others to read, and hopfully enjoy it the same way I did. | | | | No animal may drink alcohol "to excess" Nov 17, 2009 |
A fairy tale or a nightmare? It all began with a dream by Major, a Middle White boar, of equality, and freedom from oppression. Maybe not in our life comrade, but eventually.
The dream brings a song. Intolerable conditions lead to revolution. As time passes things change; not exactly as planned.
There are two striking parts to this tale that stand out. First when Boxer is sent to the hospital and Benjamin reads the side of the van "Horse Slaughterer." Secondly there was a party in the farm house as the pigs were playing cards with the men, two aces of spades showed up. An argument ensues. Then a realization was drawn by the creatures outside looking in as they "...looked from pig to man, and man to pig, and from pig to man again..."
| | | | Aminal Farm Oct 2, 2009 |
| This classic was ordered for my son. This classic is going to be used in my son's AP English class. So, in addition to the copy issued by his instructor, the ordered edition will be for my son's home studies. | | |  | Animal Farm Sep 25, 2009 |
I haven't read this book since Jr. High, but it was just as good as I remembered it. I couldn't keep the book down. Made me really think about "life" and where our Nation is going.
I would highly recommend this book to EVERYONE. Pretty easy reading. | | | Write your own review about Animal Farm
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