George Orwell wrote a unique story in 1945 to criticize the political system of that time. He uses animal characters to tell his story. The novel effectively portrays how animals rebel human leadership with the intent to rule themselves. Some animals pursue the rebellion because they believe they are going to be free at last. However, as events turn out, they end up in more oppression by one of their kind. The animals end up in disappointment and slavery. Orwell brings out the political theme carefully. In my opinion, Orwell’s story has relevance to the political and economical system in the developing world today.
Orwell’s piece is relevant, in comparison to current happenings in the world. Although written in parallelism to the Russian government at that time, there are lessons that apply universally. The story compares to the story of the developing world. Most of the developing world faced colonialism, an era that oppressed the people. The people decided to rise against the colonial powers and drove them out of their nations. The people were enthusiastic that better days were on the way. The countries rebelled against the colonial era and its systems. This situation compares to the animal revolution in Orwell’s story. The colonial era is parallel to the leadership of Mr. Jones as Orwell illustrates.
According to Haynes, on gaining independence, most of the countries drafted a constitution for themselves, one that allows them the democracy and freedom they so wanted (12). The exit of the colonialists did not change situations in most of the countries. The leaders in power do not respect the constitution. The people are free but there is no democracy. The liberation they wanted remains, but a dream. This situation compares pe...
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Works Cited: Ferguson, James. (1990) The Anti-politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticisation, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Cambridge. University Press McMichael, Philip. The. (2000) “Development and social change: a global perspective.”
Social commentary is sometimes found at the heart of good art, whether that art form is literature or popular music. The novel, Animal Farm by George Orwell, and the rock album, Animals written and performed by Pink Floyd share the same characteristic of scathing social commentary. The artworks also share an animal metaphor that serves to cast a dark light on human social interactions and stratification functions. Conversely, the artworks individually attack the diametrically opposed, socio-economic systems of communism (by Orwell) and capitalism (by Roger Waters). The artworks are individually astounding, but when viewed in tandem, alludes to the idea that socio-economic systems are still evolving and in time the terms capitalism and communism will be thought as ineffective as feudalism.
Imagine you are born into an impoverish country where government officials take advantage of the poor and the struggle to make ends meet are no longer endurable. To what extent would you go to get out of poverty? In Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power, the stories of two Haitians, Acephie Joseph and Chouchou Louis exposed the injustice poor people faced in underprivileged country. In the chapter “On Suffering and Structural Violence” Farmer makes a valid and supportive argument on how those individuals were constrained by poverty and suffered structural violence. Paul farmer defines structural violence as continuously suffering inflicted on the poor by people of power such as government
Written in the middle of World War II, it took two years for George Orwell’s Animal Farm to be published, finally, on the 17th of August 1945, into a post-war world. His novel contains themes of satire and the general characteristics of dystopian fiction, although its primary convention is allegory. George Orwell was an outspoken democratic socialist and his imposed his concerns and criticism of Soviet Russia into his book. On a literal level, Animal Farm can be interpreted as how ethics can easily be twisted into warped versions of the original and provides a good moral lesson for those who are reading, yet on a more symbolic level, it exhibits Orwell’s concerns on the use of education and knowledge as tools of oppression, the pitfalls of revolution and the corruptive qualities of power.
It was was a dark night, all the animals huddled around Old Major to hear what he had to say about his dream. It turns out Old Major talks about rebelling against man so that all animals can have a better life. Ironically, after Rebellion, no one except Napoleon has a better life and he makes their lives even harsher. This is a story of communism, this is the story of Animal Farm.
When it comes to undeveloped countries, the discovery of valuable resources can easily lead to resource dependence (Wantchekon, 1999: Anderson, 1995, p. 33 *; Robinson, 2006). As a result, political repression and political laziness often run rampant. Under these circumstances the incumbent party is almost always re-elected because of the appeasive payoff...
Dr. Noah Zerbe is a professor and chair of the department of politics at Humboldt State University in California and someone who has spent time in both South Africa and Zimbabwe. Dr. Zerbe goes in depth into the factors that surrounded the 2002 famine in Africa, where 14 million Africans were on the brink of starvation. The Malawi president, just a season before the famine, sold off all of Mal...
Unegbu, C. (2003). Bellwether of african democracy. World Policy Journal, 20(1), 41-47. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40209846 .
...re fearful of the other powerful countries (United States and Russia). This changed during the end of the Cold War giving a new era of promise and an evolving international order (Grant p572). In 1994, the Global Conference on Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States made it clear that national, regional and international levels need to work together for better outcomes (Grant p581). In this conference, Third World Countries that the United Nations should also place more focus on hard economic issues as well. The agenda for development was created to deal with sensitivity to development concerns and the influence of global development policy decisions that were aborted 15 years ago in the Cancun Summit (Grant p582). The global transformation will focus on advancing the interest of groups that have universal membership of the United Nations.
The UN Millennium Development Goals are as follows: eradicate extreme hunger and poverty; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and global partnership for development. At face value, these sound like worthy goals for the world to strive toward. However, the achievement of these goals and the positive impact, if any, these have on developme...
Smith, R.K. (1996). Understanding third world politics: theories of political change and development. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Animal Farm, a novel by George Orwell, was a story of courage and corrupt government. It was set on a farm in England. This setting is very important to the story itself and the characters in it. It made the plot a lot more interesting and influenced all the characters.
McMichael, Philip, ed 2012. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, 5th ed. London: Sage Publications, Inc.
Writers often use social criticism in their books to show corruptness or weak points of a group in society. One way of doing this is allegory which is a story in which figures and actions are symbols of general truths. George Orwell is an example of an author who uses allegory to show a social criticism effectively. As in his novel Animal Farm, Orwell makes a parody of Soviet Communism as demonstrated by Animal Farm's brutal totalitarian rule, manipulated and exploited working class, and the pigs' evolution into the capitalists they initially opposed.
The gap between developed and underdeveloped is evident in today’s world. In naïve effort to bridge this gap a host of aid projects and development schemes are plotted onto less developed countries. But what is development really? James Ferguson attempts to explore this concept in his book “The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho”. The book is an extension of Ferguson’s PhD dissertation and was published in 1990 by Cambridge University Press. The book is interesting in that it seeks to give the reader a critical understanding and insight of the actual processes that take place when development projects are implemented. Using the small African country of Lesotho as his setting, Ferguson’s book is centre around the Thaba-Tseka Development Project. This book is likely interest a variety of audience, namely anthropologists, sociologists, economists, development practitioners or any lay person interested in the field of development.