Animal Farm: An Allegory of Revolution

Abstract

In spite of Orwell’s well-known opposition to continued British rule in India (where Burmese Days was banned) he was hired in August 1941 to produce programmes for the Indian section of the BBC’s Eastern Service, to counter Japanese and German radio propaganda. Two million Indian volunteer troops were fighting on the British side, and the BBC’s task was to maintain Indian support. For more than two years Orwell prepared weekly news bulletins, commissioned cultural talks and discussions, adapted stories, wrote dialogues and reviews. Because paper was in short supply, newspapers and magazines, the outlets for Orwell’s work, were very restricted. Broadcasting allowed him to keep up his political comment and literary journalism. W. J. West has convincingly suggested that Orwell’s experience in radio adaptation and in condensing, simplifying and arranging information for propaganda purposes largely accounts for the success of Animal Farm — its speed of composition (Orwell completed it in three months, after leaving the BBC in November 1943), its clarity and conciseness, its universality of appeal, its radically different form from any of Orwell’s previous work.⁴⁹

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson