Animal Farm (spoilers to those who have not read it)

[Melody]

Now, this is way off topic from HP, but at least it is a book.  :)

I never read "Animal Farm" in high school or college, but I always
wanted to.  So this weekend my brother gave me his copy to read, and I
must agree it is quite a good book.  

Brief.  
To the point.  
Pessimistic.

I can see how things can get so bad that they turn out the way they
did in the book and can be manipulated into being that way, but I
can't help think in the end when the pigs are like humans, that the
farm animals can just as easily rebel against the pigs.  Granted the
point of the story seems to be the circle of a hard life is constant
no matter how you perceive it, hence the line from the donkey
Benjamin.  I don't know if I am just eternally optimistic or I just am
stubbornly determined to see the good in man to rise above.  Now I am
getting into the "Lord of the Flies" argument.

I guess I just don't see how the animals are stuck "forever" in
misery.  I mean England and America got out of the slums of
Industrialization and cleaned up their faults.  Is the story more
about distracting reality by believing you are free?  Is the story
saying you are controlled by your fears?  Or is the story about how
the smartest can always find ways to arrange things to his favor?

What I do wonder is what happens after the pig Napoleon dies.  That is
what saves many a tyrant's rule.  His inheritor is not as "smart" or
as "clever" as him to spread so much misery.  The question of who
would reign after Hitler died.  Would the whole thing fall because he
or she could not carry the weight of it?  Has totalitarianism ever
lasted over 100 years?  There is so little I know about it and world
events.  I know fear can create a situation for a moment, but
eventually the people revolt.  

That seems to be all over history.  And those succeeding get to feel
freedom for once.  And even though this book presents it as fleeting
or a prop, isn't it more than they had before?  Where does reality
lie, in the head or in the eye?

Ok, I will stop.  I just had to wonder.  Damn books I read.  :)


Melody