Orwell Matters discussion

I recently challenged my Mum to read Animal Farm. My Mum is a keen reader, but by her own admission, she doesn't care much for the details of history, nor is she overly interested in politics. Luckily she liked the book, but as a story, not for its political meaning.
I got me thinking, can you read works such as animal farm and 1984 without any knowledge of the symbolism. I suppose that all books mean something and are all political in a sense, and although you may not know exactly what they mean but you appreciate the moment. Mum would have appreciated that boxer was being oppressed, does it matter that she did not recognise that Boxer represented the Russian working class?

Let me know your thoughts? and mums in the group, so be kind lol

I personally think 1984 is 'easier' to read than animal farm, never been a big fan of that novel myself, not even the graphic novel of recent. Maybe, she could start with his diary and letters?

Any allegory can be read as just story. Hence children's enjoyment of Wind in the Willows and Narnia etc etc. Obviously the more you know the more you get from it. James Joyce's Ulysses is another example where at the time of writing everyone would have known the current day references he was making in addition to all those from Hamlet, Ulysses and the catholic religion. now they all have to be covered in footnotes!
Personally I read Orwell more for his lucid and clear writing. His essays are still gold and need little explanation - see 'Why I Write'.
I highly recommend his diaries and letters and essays etc having read all 4 volumes. In these you get his writing, his politics and a day-to-day run down of what was going on during the war in Britain. Fabulous stuff.

Ewell wrote: "I recently challenged my Mum to read Animal Farm. My Mum is a keen reader, but by her own admission, she doesn't care much for the details of history, nor is she overly interested in politics. Luck..."

I recently read Burmese Days and reread 1984, and my impression is that Orwell wrote “political fiction” in the same way that Camus and Sartre wrote “philosophical fiction”. Sure, you can enjoy Animal Farm without knowing about the Stalin and Trotsky — indeed, this novel is his most enjoyable — but you will get more out of it if you know a bit of Russian history. (Part of the fun is matching the characters and events with the real-life counterparts.) Similarly, imagine reading Sartre’s Nausea without knowing about existentialism: the novel will be a lot less enjoyable.

Orwell himself, in “Why I Write”, wrote that

Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. ... [I]t is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books.

At any rate, Orwell was not a genius in writing fiction, and I feel most of his novels are worth reading only if complemented with his enormous non-fiction body of work. I really recommend this ebook (ISBN 9780241253472), for it contains all of his non-fiction writings outside his books. 12 volumes for a reasonable price.