Everyone has read this one. I must admit that I took it on because it is short and sort of familiar and I wanted to get the runs on the board with this blog.
It was bleaker than what I remember it, and I almost shed tears at the removal of the dim but decent Boxer from the scene. I don't think it has dated at all. While Napoleon (there's a subtle hint for you) appears in the original to have been modelled on the long gone and almost as long discredited Stalin, so many others of his ilk, cruel and calculating people, bolstered by a cult of personality, often best nurtured by the intellectually weak, have appeared since Orwell completed this in 1944. Some of them have, mercifully, disappeared - Saddam, Ceaucescu, Tito (maybe he wasn't too bad), Hoxha, Kim Il Sung - but many remain and we will definitely see their like again. And like Benjamin the donkey, for the majority of us, nothing gets significantly better or worse no matter who is in power.
The work is subtitled A Fairy Story and there is an animated version, which I have not seen. In its raw form, though, it is not for kids. It is depressing and chilling. There are parallels in my native Australia with the differences between the once idealistic Australian Labor Party, who brought in genuinely progressive legislation aimed at bettering the lot of the worker, and the ruling business class diminishing year by year. Not a cheery thought, but then Orwell did not intend this to boost the spirits of anyone. And it didn't.
8 out of 10.
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