I am reading again!
I am reading again.
I did not read a single novel for almost 10 months. Last week, I read four. Not novels, but books. Two plays, a critical essay and a novel. It really reminded me of what I love the most. I love reading. A lot.
Anyway, here's the review of 'the animal farm' by George Orwell.
Image by confused_me from Pixabay
Now, I totally know I have no right to comment on the piece of utterly unimaginable beauty that this novel is. But, I am going to do it anyway. It's small, precise, to the point and a lot entertaining, for the most part. Towards the end, it was a bit of torture because you knew something terrible is going to happen after this terrible thing and it did, in-fact happened.
Do I think this is the best thing I have ever read? No, The picture of Dorian Gray still takes the cake. But it was close. I honestly felt it lacked a bit of the details that I would have liked to know. But that is a small grievance and everything that was present was near perfect. Am I content with what I read after listening to the hype all this time? It's not as straightforward as that. All the people that recommended this to me read it when they were younger than me and for that age, it more than performed. But it was a bit surface-level for my age and that might mean I will like 1984 all that more and it could mean I am nitpicking here. Obviously all of this from the expectation that it will be the best thing I have laid my eyes upon but it is generally very good, brilliant characters and a great, but not over the top plot. Well that is what the humans have experienced, so the plot is not his to change.
All of this is fine, and after all that I have said, I really love this book. But, that's not the reason I decided to write this book. I have a bit more to say than just the contents of the book.
This book has been tagged as dystopian. Not only dystopian, but it is one of them. I do not know if this is dystopian or not. As I said, it does have a lot of troublesome things happening to the characters you are supposed to love. But, it is also a socio-political commentary. This means it depicts what happened and forces us to think critically about it, eventually to improve on it. So, are we living in a dystopia? I read a few articles on this topic and the explanation that has been provided is that all characters are working to be better off but end up in a worse condition. True, that did happen, but does that warrant use of dystopia? Dystopia is a strong word and it shouldn't be thrown out like chips.
I think it is Utopian. I know, it is not technically a utopia in any way imaginable. But, I believe that it is the best that could have happened. A perfect utopia cannot sustain itself because it has nowhere to take itself, no standard to achieve. If dystopia can be used to describe this novel, Utopia is even more easily explainable. "The situation provides the characters a perfect opportunity to improve themselves and their surroundings. This can only be a positive. And they have more to change than when they started!" Grim. But, hey! I did explain it. In all honesty, I do not think that this is a utopia and I completely reject the notion that this is a dystopia. I just wanted to demonstrate that if a book can be explained as both a dystopia and utopia, it probably isn't any of them.
That's it then!