Animal Farm as a Fable
Traditional fables are moral stories that usually feature animals. Aesop's Fables, which are probably the most well known, tell tales about animals that have clearly human characteristics, like the sly fox, the patient crow and the selfish dog. Since Aesop's stories have been told for over 2,500 years, they are clearly a form well suited to telling a universal truth in a way that is accessible to children and memorable for adults. In writing Animal Farm, Orwell wanted to express a particular set of ideas about revolutions - ideas that he thought were more or less universal. The success of the book since its publication would seem to indicate that he had the right idea.
The plot of Animal Farm is clearly based on the events of the Russian Revolution. Old Major's ideas about animalism correspond to those of Karl Marx, and the way in which they are taken up and put into action represents the activities of Leon Trotsky (Snowball) and a combination of Lenin and Stalin (Napoleon). The haphazard nature of the rebellion closely parallels the opportunistic response to events that brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917, and the history of the farm roughly follows events in European history up to the Second World War. The fact that we are still reading Animal Farm long after these events have passed into history again suggests something of Orwell's achievement.
The fable format allowed Orwell to reduce complicated events to a level that almost anyone could understand - the workings of the Russian Politburo or of the NKVD (the secret police) are complex matters but the story of Squealer and Napoleon's trained dogs is much more accessible. Similarly, the lives an...
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...such as when he speaks of Squealer, "who had unaccountably been absent during the fighting." Again, young readers are likely to enjoy this kind of statement where the real meaning is only slightly below the surface.
Fables are meant to have a moral, and the moral of Animal Farm is that all revolutions fail in the end. Orwell could have written a long essay expressing such ideas but it is doubtful that many people would now be reading it. The success of Animal Farm is that it tells the sad tale of a group of creatures we care about, and how their hopes and dreams were dashed. Beyond the surface story, however, is the message that for ordinary people revolutions simply change one set of rulers for another. It is a depressing message but people are prepared to listen to it because it is told in a simple and entertaining way like all the best fables.
St. Albans Sanatorium is a destination known by serious paranormal investigators as a place where they can seek answers to the mysteries of what lies beyond death. Some of these investigators were able to find resolutions for themselves to a number of these age old riddles through their experiences at the sanatorium. The frightening and true stories found within the pages of this book are about these inquisitive investigators’ encounters with The Ghosts of St. Albans Sanatorium.
Since I come from the Eastern Shore of this state, I was surprised to hear a ghost story I was previously unaware of. The story takes place in a park in Salisbury. The person who told me the story is a 19-year-old sophomore at the University, and we spoke about it one evening after dinner. He believes it to be true, because one of his friend’s siblings has apparently experienced the ghost firsthand. I tape-recorded his narrative:
I was told a story about one of Cloudcroft's more famous ghosts when casually lounging in the undergraduate student physics lounge at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a group of students during a lunch break before class. This occurred during early April, 2005. I inquired whether anyone knew any ghost stories or folklore. A friend of mine volunteered that she knew several ghost stories from her travels. The storyteller was a 23-year-old Caucasian female from an upper-middle class family in Baltimore. She currently lives in Crofton, MD, and is a physics and astronomy major.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
There’s a haunted house in Dover, Delaware called the Governor’s Mansion, where all of the Governors of Delaware have lived. If you go to the house yourself, you might see or experience a couple different ghosts. One evening, a guest to the house passed an old man dressed in old-fashioned clothes while going down the stairs for dinner. Once at the table the guest asked the owners who the person was. The curious owners asked for a description of the man. The description that the visitor sent chills down the spines of the owners, as it was an exact description of the owner’s father who had been dead for many years, and nobody else was in the house. The father had also been known for getting drunk a lot, so to this day he can still be seen drinking any liquor left out in the open. The mansion is also known for being a part of the Underground Railroad, so lots of slaves were always coming and going through the house at night. One night the house got busted and one of the runaway slaves ran and hid in a big tree in the yard. The slave was up there for a while and was already tired from his journey to the house.
This story, although somewhat unique in its exact plot, contains many elements that make it a typical and traditional ghost story. These elements suggest common fears in today’s society of people in general, and children specifically.
The particular story I collected takes place in Philadelphia, where ghost stories are plentiful. Philadelphia is an old city with a rich cultural heritage, and our founding fathers made history in the place that was once our nation’s capital (Eidmann). Many believe that their spirits and spirits of those from colonial times still lurk around. It is easy to feel like spirits are around when in a place where many people have lived and died before, and in a place that is filled with old buildings and landmarks. All of these factors make this city a perfect place for a ghost story.
When one usually thinks of a hearing a ghost story, the setting is dark with flickering light (such as around a campfire or in a basement with bad lighting) and, of course, it is nighttime. Needless to say, when I heard this story during the middle of the day on a Friday, I was a little taken aback. When prompted for any urban legends or ghost stories a white, female friend of mine immediately responded with, “Have you ever heard of de Sales Academy?” With my negative response, the nineteen year old student jumped into her story:
With sounds of youthful laughter, conversations about the students’ weekends, and the shuffling of college ruled paper; students file into their classrooms and find their seats on a typical Monday morning. As the announcements travel throughout the school’s intercoms, the usual “Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance” becomes no longer usual but rather puzzling to some students. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.” Confusion passes through some of the student’s minds. With the reoccurrence of “God” in the backdrop of American life, the relationship between church and state has become of little to no matter for American citizens just as it has with American students. While congress makes no law respecting an establishment of religion, the term “freedom of religion” presents itself to no longer be the definition of “free”, while also having its effects on debates today. According to Burt Rieff, in Conflicting Rights and Religious Liberty, “Parents, school officials, politicians, and religious leaders entered the battle over defining the relationship between church and state, transforming constitutional issues into political, religious, and cultural debates” (Rieff). Throughout the 20th century, many have forgotten the meaning of religion and what its effects are on the people of today. With the nonconformist society in today’s culture, religion has placed itself in a category of insignificance. With the many controversies of the world, religion is at a stand still, and is proven to not be as important as it was in the past. Though the United States government is based on separation of church and state, the gover...
This tale was told by a twenty-year-old Caucasian male from Boonton, New Jersey, who was very excited to share his paranormal experiences. According to the narrator, Split Rock Road runs through a nice residential neighborhood. However, at one point the pavement stops and turns to gravel. At this point, there are no lights on the road, which is surrounded by woods. As you continue down the road, you come to a bridge on top of a dam and an abandoned guard tower. Legend has it that if you turn off your headlights and stop the car while on the bridge, everyone in the car dies. The narrator attempted this once with his friends late at night. He managed to turn off the headlights and stop the car, but all of his friends started screaming and begging him to go back, so he left very quickly. He said that it was one of the scariest experiences of his life. Additionally, there is rumored to be a ghost that wanders on Split Rock Road, a young girl in a white sundress. However, the narrator had never personally seen this ghost.
Perhaps some of the best stories told are classified as urban legends. Urban legends have become a part of culture, and a way to tell stories. They can tell us things about ourselves and about how we lead our lives. They serve to entertain us, but can also teach us lessons, such as morals to live by. Urban legends are passed on between generations, and become a part of the oral history of a place. Whether the stories are true or not, urban legends are often taken to hold at least some truth about a culture. No matter how radical some of the stories may be, people often take the urban legends to be true. People may take these stories to be true simply for entertainment purposes, but mostly because the morals the stories teach are important. Urban legends can become a part of the place where they originate, and can help define a culture, and shape its history.
This story was recounted to me by a 20 year old female student at my University. She is a Communications major, coming from an upper middle class family in the rural suburbs of New Jersey. I interviewed her in her apartment sometime in the late afternoon in an informal setting. Although she is skeptical about things such as urban legends and ghost tales, she explained to me that this story always unsettled her in an inexplicable way.
The novel “Animal Farm” was written by the author name George Orwell. Animal Farm is a novel based upon the lives of a society of animals wanting a better life for themselves living on the Manor Farm. The setting of the book is a farm called “Manor Farm”. The theme of this book is that the animals should make a stand; if they continue doing the same thing they will continue getting the same results. It is better to be free and starving, than to be fed and enslaved.
The Nelly Butler hauntings is referred to as the first recorded ghost story in American history (LiBrizzi 5), and possibly the most exciting hauntings to date as there are still many unsolved mysteries. The apparition appeared on more than 30 separate occasions to over 100 witnesses in Sullivan, Maine, just over fifteen years after the American Revolution (5-6). Although the Nelly Butler apparition is one of the most convincing ghosts of all time, it was subject to suspicions of fraud. These claims turn out to be groundless as the evidence reveals the ghost to be genuine.
George Orwell's goal in writing the novel Animal Farm was to portray the events surrounding the Russian revolution that took place in 1917. Orwell's tale of Animal Farm is seemingly a story of how a group of farmyard animals plot to overthrow their owner and seize control of the land. The novel seems to be a simple story, however Orwell wrote this book as an allegory, a story that has a clear secondary meaning beneath is literal sense. Everything in Animal Farm is used to represent people and events that took place during the Russian revolution from 1917-1939. Orwell chose to represent Russia's three famous leaders during this time with three pigs. Each three are drastically different and have dissimilar beliefs. Snowball representing Leon Trotsky, Napoleon by Josef Stalin and Old Major by Karl Marx. Orwell wrote this and many other books as warnings. The warning is that people must change their ways, or we are most surely doomed.