Something Weird is Happening to George Orwell's 'Animal Farm'

Once a simple allegory read by middle schoolers, the book now provokes unexpected questions about the political order

The other day I read a discussion about how many books people “should” read. A lot of book-headed people showed up to say “the more the better,” and “thousands.” On this point, I dissent: I think you should read about 250 books, and at that point, you should know what the most important 100 books are: and read those. Presumably ~50 of the 250 books you read were among the 100 books, so that would leave only 50 more on your checklist, taking the total to 300.

If you’ve read 250 books and are still voraciously consuming novels, that’s fine: but that’s just a hobby—harmless, but also not necessary for the soul or for good citizenship or forming a worldview. And the truth is, if you’re smart, you can probably figure out what the most important 100 books are even before you read 250 books. A few years ago, I put together a list of 100 books.

I’d change maybe 15 of these, but it’s basically to the point—and my list significantly overlaps with the various “Great Books” lists you’ll see passed around on the internet. I just seasoned it with my own personality here and there.

Anyway, I’ve read all these, and that’s about enough — I was never into reading as a habit, or as a hobby, or as part of my identity. I just wanted to understand the world and history.

It’s always a fun question at cocktail parties where you know the people present to be over-educated to ask them what their most egregious reading omissions are: what obviously important works haven’t they read? For instance, I finished my Ph.D. in literature without reading Macbeth. But I read that years ago. And I tidied up a lot of cracks in my dam, and I’m getting to a point where I don’t feel like I’ve missed much. Yeah, maybe I haven’t read all of Pynchon’s novels or the fifth best novel by Faulkner or the Tale of Genji, but I kind of “get it.” Like, enough.

Still, I did decide that I should read Animal Farm recently. I suppose that was a glaring omission. I guess I never read it because I always thought I “got it” without reading it — I figured, “Yeah, okay, an allegory about some farm animals as political actors. Like, I get it.” Especially having read 1984. I figured it would be a simple and short piece about how communism is bad, and that would be that.

And… it is that. But, reading it now, in the current year, there’s a sort of unexpected extra layer of meaning in it, a layer that I don’t think Orwell could have foreseen. It’s a thread of meaning that arises due to the bizarre political reality we find ourselves in. However bizarre Great Britain’s politics were in 1945, I don’t think they were the same kind of bizarre that we’re dealing with.

In short, this is the problem: Farmer Jones does suck. He really is a shitty leader, and the farm is in a terrible situation. I’ve you’ve never read it, here’s a good and quick review of the book (watch on 1.5x):

This guy is right to point out that the book was conceived as a repudiation of Soviet communism. But more specifically, the book is a repudiation of revolution. And yeah, sure enough: revolutions have a tendency to go very sideways, and they have sometimes made matters far worse than they were previous to the revolution.

But what’s missing from Orwell’s presentation is an answer to the obvious question: well, what should the animals have done?

I don’t want to go on and on about this, because I suppose most of you get the idea already. We have all reconsidered the major political shifts, and a lot of conservatives have concluded that the American and French revolutions were bad—and they go on to say that Revolution itself is bad. They leave you with the impression that every revolt against the status quo is a bad decision—and it seems the implication is: no matter how bad it gets, never rebel.

Now, in Animal Farm, the way it’s presented, the guy who runs the farm is sort of just getting old and neglecting the farm—it’s sort of gradually falling into ruin. There’s no indication that he is, say, blackmailed by Mossad after participating in taboo sexual debauchery. But imagine if things got even that bad? Should the animals just endure everything?

I guess I’m just saying that it does actually seem conceivable to me that a political regime could become so thoroughly laced with corruption that totally toppling it would be better than continuing to endure it. I acknowledge that it’s a difficult thing to discern where that line is — so I am happy to hear arguments that “it’s not that bad yet.” But I sort of think it is. We got to the point last week where mainstream pundits were saying we should all drop the Epstein questions because the information we might receive could be so destabilizing that it might bring down the government.

And when I saw someone in the replies say, “if our government will fall if people find out how tied it is to blackmail and sex crimes, then let it fall,” I had an impulse to agree—enthusiastically. Rip the bandage off, you know? Enough with the limited hangouts.

And just to be clear: I’m not any kind of “trad,” obviously, but if I were—if I was one of those guys influenced by Rod Dreher, if I thought Catholic integralism was the solution—I might be even more inclined to advocate for revolution. Because it seems to me there is just no way there’s going to be an institutional correction. Even if we have great patience, the long march back through the institutions is never going to happen. Because the new regime is self-aware, it keeps an eye out for retrogressive infiltrators.

I guess that’s the point about Animal Farm: in that story, the animals rise up and take over. But in our own timeline, in real life, the coup has already happened. The animals have been running the farm since 1963. We were born after the revolution. So the situation isn’t the same as the one Orwell described. In his mind, overthrowing Farmer Jones was akin to overthrowing the Anglican monarchy. But our Farmer Jones is like, feminism and BLM-consciousness. So it seems to me that to be “quietest,” to be patient, to be willing to work within the system that currently exists—well, it seems crazy to me.

And there is no good literary analogy. Animal Farm isn’t helpful to us. It’s the wrong analogy now.