Background Info or What means What (Things you need to know for Animal Farm)

What do you think? “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Abraham Lincoln What is your reaction to this quote?

Key People/Events Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) Russian Revolution – Instigated by Marx/Lenin’s ideas. When the peasants/working class of Russia decided to revolt against the aristocracy in 1917. They wanted all men to be equal and all men to contribute their fair share to society. Lenin wanted “Land, Bread, Peace for everyone.” No more “Ruling Class” just by virtue of one’s birth or place in society. Dreamed of a society where all men work together and SHARE in the profits… Lenin wanted “Land, Bread, Peace for Everyone”

Czar Nicholas The (ineffective) leader of pre-Revolutionary Russia = living in luxury while his people were starving. Would take from the peasants without fair compensation By virtue of his birth, he was the leader Killed in the Russian Revolution

Josef Stalin After Lenin died… Began his rise to power with good intentions Took charge of the Revolution after Lenin’s death eventually became corrupted by greed and his quest for power Became a dictator who eventually slaughtered millions of Russian peasants

Leon Trotsky Supported Lenin and Marx’s ideas and worked with them to start the Revolution Later sent into exile by Stalin and murdered in Mexico

“Proletariat” The working class of Russia who is ill-informed and uneducated believe wholeheartedly in their leaders won’t accept the fact that they are being used by their government

Pravda KGB The propaganda tool of the Communist Party. Controlled by whom? KGB Very scary group – government Sponsored police group deeply feared by the people of Russia.

ALLEGORY An extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

Irony is when the opposite of what is expected to happen occurs. Three kinds of irony: verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else. dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know. situational irony is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results.

SATIRE A literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the subject of the satiric attack.

FABLE Giving human speech and manners to animals and inanimate things. Fables often conclude with a moral, delivered in the form of a sentence to summarize the lesson.

PROPAGANDA information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

About the author… George Orwell – born 1903, died 1950 According to one biography, Orwell's first word was "beastly."   Orwell was bit by the writing bug at an early age, reportedly composing his first poem around the age of four. 

About the author… Orwell is best known for two novels, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), both of which were published toward the end of his life. Got the idea for Animal Farm when he saw a horse being whipped by a young boy and wondered why the horse didn’t use its strength to fight back

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism…Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.” George Orwell

Themes in AnFm Power corrupts those who possess it. People’s ignorance contributes to their political and social oppression. Revolutions may result in a change of political power, but often the lives of a majority of people stay about the same. In society, individuals are not treated equally.