Excerpted from the article " When Dystopia Becomes Reality: 1984 vs Brave New World " published by the WeChat public account "Observation Diary ".
Orwell's novels are at odds with his own identity. He's a staunch leftist, a socialist, a proponent of collectivist ideology, and yet has written a terrible collectivist social dystopian novel. Before writing the novel, in 1936, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, Orwell joined the Republican Army led by the Spanish Communist Party as an international anti-fascist volunteer. Later, under the influence of the Soviet purge, Orwell escaped from Spain. . The experience is documented in Orwell's memoir, "Homage to Catalonia," which exposes horrific wars and lies against humanity. Stalin's totalitarianism did not make Orwell despair of socialism, but made him more firm in his belief, to be precise, in "democratic socialism".
The Spanish Civil War and the events of 1936-37 changed the tide, and I know where I stand ever since. Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been against totalitarianism, directly or indirectly, in support of what I understand to be democratic socialism. George Orwell, "Why I Write" 1946
Art comes from life, and it was Orwell's life experience that laid the foundation for his excellent creation in the future. His two most famous and well-known works, "Animal Farm" and "1984", were the last in his short life. completed in a few years. "Animal Farm" is about how totalitarianism came into being, "1984" is about how freedom dies.
In 1944, Orwell, who had experienced the Spanish Civil War and the Anti-Fascist War, wrote the book "Animal Farm", which became a milestone in Orwell's personal writing history, marking his writing from simply focusing on the bottom society. life, turned to defending true democratic socialism, writing in his 1947 preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm: "For the past ten years I have been convinced that if we want to bring the socialist movement back to life, The Russian myth has to be destroyed." The book was written as early as 1944, but was rejected by four publishing houses until the Cold War. In Why I Write, Orwell stated that Animal Farm was his first conscious attempt to combine " political and artistic purposes". In "Animal Farm", animals obey the seven commandments made by pigs, one of which is classic:
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Interestingly, this book is often mistaken for a fairy tale book by many people from the cover, the name, and sometimes you can even find it in the children's books section of the bookstore. In the eyes of children, this is a story of animals uniting and working together to defeat the evil farmer and landlord .
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