1984 & Animal Farm & Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell describes a grey totalitarian world ruled by Big Brother and his enormous network of agents including the Thought Police - a world where news is fabricated according to the authorities wishes and people live lukewarm lives by rote. Winston Smith a hero who lacks heroic attributes merely wants truth and decency. But he understands there is no chance for him because he lives in a society where privacy is non-existent and individuals with unconventional thoughts are brainwashed or executed. Even though the year 1949 has passed George Orwells nightmare picture of the world we were creating remains the great modern classic portrait of a negative Utopia. The famous satire of the Russian Revolution by George Orwell is such a part of our present society that we often forget who wrote the original lines. Its the storey of how Mr. Jones Manor Farm is transformed into Animal Farm a totally democratic society founded on the belief that All Animals Are Created Equal. In a slow evolution that bears an unsettling familiarity the pigs Napoleon Squealer and Snowball emerge as leaders of the new community as a result of their cunning. The savage betrayal of the loyal horse Boxer culminates in the re-establishment of totalitarian control with the bloodstained postscript to the founding slogan: But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others. George Orwell travelled to Spain in 1936 to report on the civil war but instead joined the P.O.U.M. militia to fight the Fascists. He portrays both the harsh and hilarious aspects of trench warfare on the Aragon front the Barcelona uprising in May 1937 his nearly fatal wounds two weeks later and his escape from Barcelona into France after the P.O.U.M. was suppressed in this now justly famous account of his ordeal. Orwells analysis of why the Communist Party hindered the workers revolution and labelled the P.O.U.M. as Trotskyist which gives a fundamental key to understanding the wars outcome.