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Animal Farm and 1984 | 
| Author: George Orwell
Creator: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $14.76
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Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 7714
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0151010269
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780151010264
ASIN: 0151010269
Publication Date: June 1, 2003
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Product Description
ANIMAL FARM
George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture. It is the account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones's Manor Farm into Animal Farm--a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. Out of their cleverness, the pigs Napoleon, Squealer, and Snowball emerge as leaders of the new community in a subtle evolution that proves disastrous. The climax is the brutal betrayal of the faithful horse Boxer, when totalitarian rule is reestablished with the bloodstained postscript to the founding slogan: But some Animals Are More Equal Than Others. . . .
1984
In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.
Book Description
In this Readers' Guide, Daniel Lea takes a decisive path through the maze of interpretations that has accumulated around Orwell's best-known novels, examining critical reactions from the beginning of the Cold War through to the collapse of Communist Eastern Europe, and at the same time placing Orwell within a long tradition of dystopian writings. In exploring the artistic, cultural and social contexts of Orwell's work, it is an essential resource for students and general readers alike.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
On this edition - May 30, 2006
A. R. Grenier (Alexandria, VA)
59 out of 59 found this review helpful
Because most people will review the actual book(s), which in this case are classics and I feel do not truly need a review, I will review this edition. Having the two in one is useful if you, like me, have not read the two prior to purchase or if you are a fan of both books. They are bound handsomely and the dust jacket is simple and smooth. The introduction is by someone who is obviously enamored with Orwell, and it gives some insight to the work and history of Orwell, though is mostly unecessary as you could probably wikipedia the information. This is a nice edition and I felt it was a good choice for me.
Worthy literature that transcends the genre of political fable June 22, 2008
Odysseus (Virginia, USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is a handsome republication of Orwell's two most renowned works, Animal Farm and 1984. Even if you're just looking for 1984, this edition is to be commended; it comes with a fine introduction by today's leading Orwell enthusiast, Christopher Hitchens, and the reward of including Animal Farm requires very little in the way of additional effort or expense on your part. At 80-odd pages, you may as well pick it up in the same volume, and you're virtually certain to be glad that you did.
I'm not alone in being of a generation that was first required to read Orwell in my student days (Middle School, in my case.) It seems that there was a lot of literature churned out then, accessible to if not directly aimed at children, with the horrors of totalitarianism as its theme. In addition to reading Orwell, we were also reading Huxley, Bradbury, and Verne -- the youth-oriented John Christopher books being yet another example. The generation that lived through Nazism and Stalinism clearly wanted the younger set to be aware of the horrors that could be, and to remain on guard against them.
It doesn't seem to be quite that way anymore. Orwell's name is invoked today, but often in trivializing contexts: "Big Brother" is now a brain-numbing reality show, and "Orwellian" is a convenient and often hysterically-applied charge to political opponents. Some complaceny does seem to be inevitable: we are now further removed from the days when the likes of Hitler and Stalin killed tens of millions. Still, regimes arise that are nearly as horrific on a local scale, from Pol Pot to Saddam Hussein to the Taliban, and are real enough that Orwell's book is no joke. Orwell deserves attention if for no other reason than to sensitize us to the bad form associated with invoking his name in a trivializing context. There was a political ad on Youtube last year from an Obama supporter that cast Hillary Clinton on a giant Big Brother-like screen. I'm not in the least a fan of Senator Clinton, but associating her image with those of 1984 -- as was also done in an infamous Apple Computer ad -- trivializes Orwell's message in a deplorable way. Orwell wrote his novel to warn against real dangers that his generation lived through, and which others might yet, not as a marketing ploy to be used in selling either computers or nearly indistinguishable democratic political candidacies.
The main reason I am writing this review, however, is that re-reading Orwell in my 40's is a stark reminder that his novels are more than political parables, but are worthy literature. I hope that those reading these reviews will be aware of this, and not shut their minds to a rewarding literary experience.
As a kid, I was able to perceive the pedagogical intent of these books, but less so was I able to appreciate the literary artistry. 1984 in particular passes the Nabokovian test of creating a fully believable, if terrifying, alternate world. Beyond that, on nearly every page, Orwell leaves an image that just might stay with you forever. Small wonder that so many of the terms in 1984 ("Big Brother," "Newspeak") have burrowed their way into our lexicography.
Orwell was a man of the left who understood something that many of his compatriots did not; that what had arisen in the Soviet Union was a regime unprecedented in its horror (arriving before, and ultimately outlasting, its horrific mirror image, Hitler's Third Reich.) At a time when others on the left simply refused to believe in the reality of the USSR, he looked at it unflinchingly and wrote what it was really about.
Also, in childhood, I was not able to fully appreciate that Orwell's books simply weren't negative-utopian nightmare-fantasies, but paralleled actual events in the USSR with chilling accuracy. I knew, at some level, that he was satirizing certain events and characters in the Russian Revolution, but only in adulthood was I able to closely recognize nearly every episode and character in Animal Farm. Those familiar with USSR history will find it all here in the two books: the rewriting of the past to reaffirm the infallibility of the Party, the sudden reorienting of national propaganda to suit the latest twist of foreign policy, and the complete elimination of all references to those unfortunate souls decreed never to have existed.
Truly, the thing that makes 1984 terrifying now, is not what was imagined in the novel's construction, but what was real in its sources. It exaggerates even relative to the Stalinist state -- but not by much. It is this recognition that makes it a chilling read today.
1984 is the more vivid and evocative of the two novels. Excepting one passage (Goldstein's dreary history lesson about 2/3 of the way through) it is riveting almost throughout its 300 pages.
A few notes for younger readers: The moral of Animal Farm is not that Napoleon was simply a bad apple, but rather that the system adopted by the Animals ensured that ultimately such a tyrant would dominate. (I find the end of Animal Farm to be something of a false note; in the end the pigs prove no better than, and resemble, the humans they replaced, but this understates the tragic reality that the USSR was worse still than that which it replaced.)
As I close, I leave you with one random question about 1984: how come it never occurs to Eastasia and Eurasia to combine against Oeania? Given that Oceania keeps flipping its allegiance from one to the other, you'd think they'd ultimately catch on and both decide to attack Oceania at the same time.
Silly questions aside, this book is highly commended. Worth re-reading again, especially if you only have read Orwell when as immature as was I.
Orwell Speaks August 20, 2006
Jennifer Acevedo (Chicago, IL USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Six decades later, his work still speaks to us. Orwell's Animal Farm & 1984 are important pieces of literature and should be required reading for all. Once read, one realizes the relevance of each story and is forever changed.
The fact that they have combined both works into one book is just icing on the cake.
Both Worldy Paranoia Classics February 24, 2005
OverTheMoon (overthemoonreview@hotmail.com)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Both works are inspiring pieces of worldly paranoia, that is truth, quoted well into the twenty first century as the future, and it is, not because mankind doesn't think it will ever go this way, but because we know full well we are, but somehow are allowing it to happen everyday. It is decentralization of power from the human being, in all aspects of one's life, to a higher power, a bigger cause, communism (more so in Animal Farm; but it would be error to say that it is just politics Orwell is hinting at) called the great Lucifer because all was given to the collective body and not to God, now God is the great Lucifer because we give ourselves to the collective body of something that we can not prove, so Science is the great Lucifer, producing weapons to kill the world a million times over, toxins to poison us a million times over, are all forms of giving to a collective body the nature of death? Is it the giving to a collective body that robs the soul of its power? Is it giving oneself wholly and utterly to something other than one's own self the conduit of decent into the investment of despair. 1984 sees men and women working their themselves to skin and bone to achieve a greater good that never emerges, the ultimate failings masked by a strict authoritative regime, BIG BROTHER, the power all seeing and ever controlling, rewriting history, editing the world around them, at war with this nation one minute and switching to another the next, neighbours up and vanish and protagonists invest in each other for but a fleeting glimpse of love only to be captured by the THOUGHT POLICE for engaging in illegal activity, men at the top of this society using torture and mind control to enforce a pathology of unquestionable and undeniable supremacy of all the power to the BIG BROTHER system, and that this is the system and that is why they are alive at all, at which point we question if it is worth living at all to which Orwell delivers a resounding, no, of course it is not worth living this life, why bother at all, and that this is a piece of work that must be understood by everyone and anyone who can read and is certainly mandatory reading for anyone in least bit interested in politics or political science.
Unfortunately however we tend to vote in military commanders, lawyers and extreme capitalists into government and then ask why it is all going down hill.
The problem is there is no terminology in the English language to describe the act of one human being killing their unborn future children by process of setting up a bad management system with a legal body incorporated into that system before they die. This prison kills, yet it is justified. 1984 is maybe that word, filicide being the closest English equivalent.
A book you can't put down! August 20, 2006
Andrew K. Hochgesang (Jasper, IN USA)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Animal Farm is a very creative way to show the short comings, brainwashing, and absolute control of the Russian government and of communism in the 1st half of the 1900s. 1984 is a great story that especialy now is important because of todays government. It talks about a controlling english government that is removing people that think and have ideas contrary to what they wish them to be. They also use fear tactics in the media to get the people unquestioningly on thier side. This book, a MUST!
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