Happy New Year!
A graphic novel adaptation by the Brazilian Odyr of the classic 1945 George Orwell text. If you had to read one Of Orwell’s several great works that are still relevant to the present state of society I would choose 1984, but this is a great one, too, also focused on his concern about totalitarianism. This is lovely, watercolored, and gets at the heart of the story though loses much of Orwell’s wonderful use of the English language, too. I still recommend it, especially as a way into the original text or to accompany it.
The story is a parable about a group of farm animals who rise up against their evil farmer/landowner who is getting unfairly rich on their back-breaking labor (you’ve probably never heard of such a thing, as your country wouldn’t allow such injustice—just kidding). It also in part is an allegory or dark satire about some actual historical events: Farmer Jone, may be seen as similar to Tsar Nicholas II; the leader of the uprising, Old Major, may be like Marx/Lenin.
After the revolution is complete the animals for a time run the farm themselves, but it’s never really communism as one might hope for (in that goal of equality). The issue of power is never really absent in government, it seems; it corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as in the novel’s best-known phrase: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Political/governmental hierarchies seem inevitable--maybe it’s human nature?—but two pigs in particular, Snowball (Trotsky) and Napoleon (Stalin), eventually completely corrupt the originally stated democratic design.
Folks on the Right have always used this text as evidence that Orwell is really politically conservative, anti-communist, but I think Orwell’s larger target is not commies or even Stalinist “communism” but totalitarianism in all its forms. Clover expresses her disappointment for what comes about: "If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead- she did not know why- they had come to a time when no one dared to speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes”—Clover
So many good reviews of the original novel are her on Goodreads—Petra, Manny, many others--so good, but this is a very good adaptation!