Six Words: Feature, Rule, Revive, Pig, Waste, Control
When we got this list of words, they didn’t seem interesting to me. I continued to think about that throughout the week, but Friday evening inspiration came to me, and the words completely and rapidly fell into place, too good to waste.
Most of you will recall George Orwell’s 1945 “satirical allegorical novella” Animal Farm. Wikipedia describes the book as: “the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship” of a pig.
If you were seeing this in print, it would be easy for you to see how the words “rule” and “control”, featured in our list, are equivalent to dictatorship in that description of Animal Farm.
Animal Farm was written as a protest of Stalinist dictatorship. The animals rebel and create a list of seven commandments. The most important commandment is “All animals are equal.” And things go well – for a while. Two of the pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, are particularly eloquent and become the leaders. They like the power, and give themselves and the other pigs special food and special privileges. Snowball teaches all the animals to read and write. Napoleon grows a cult of dogs that are loyal to him. The farmers try to regain control. There is a big battle where Napoleon hides. The farmers fail to regain control.
Snowball wants to modernize but Napoleon disagrees. Tension among the party, er, pigs escalates. Napoleon’s cult chases Snowball away. Things go awry on the farm and Napoleon says everything that has gone wrong was Snowball’s fault! Many animals who are alleged to be helping Snowball in plots are executed by Napoleon’s dogs.
Isn’t it surprising, and sad, that some ideas that we thought had become part of history are being revived today?