Abstract

Animal Farm is a famous allegorical novel written by George Orwell. It tells a story that animals in the Animal Farm trying to achieve freedom through revolution and fighting out end with being oppressed under centralization again, by this the novel shows that the rulers take every opportunity to gain more power, and the so-called freedom and equality are just the methods taken to fool the crowds. The novel is nearly in complete accordance with what happened in Soviet Union in late years. This paper aims to analyze the positive and negative influence the centralization system has on the animals through comparing the revolution that happened in Animal Farm with that in Soviet Union. In the end, the paper reaches the conclusion that centralization is not always negative just like the stereotype of people. it also has positive aspects.

Key words: Centralization, dream, oppression, motivation, positive aspects

摘 要

《动物庄园》是乔治•奥威尔著名的讽刺寓言小说，通过讲述动物农庄中动物们通过自己的革命和斗争获取自由，最后却仍落入了集权统治囚牢的故事，展示了统治者为了获取更高权力的不择手段，所谓自由和平等只是愚弄可悲群众的方法。而其所描述的故事与前苏联的分崩离析几乎吻合。本文旨在分析书中动物们受到集权统治的积极与消极的影响，并将其与前苏联的十月革命、大清洗等运动下人们的反应与所受影响作对比，从而得出结论：集权统治并不如人们的刻板印象一样总是消极的，它也有积极的方面。

关键词：集权主义；理想；压迫；动力；积极方面

1.    Introduction

    George Orwell, with the original name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist and journalist known for his works marked by clarity, intelligence and wit, awareness of social justice, opposing to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic socialism. George Orwell was born talented. During his life, he lived in ghettos, did odd jobs, and experienced the miserable life of people under the oppression of the government. Orwell had a hard life during the civil war of Spain. He used to say he had been a socialist from 1930. After the experience in Spain, he began to dedicate himself in protecting democrat socialism Democrat socialism was a kind of social consciousness which considered people’s equality and consociation as the most important. Under the influence of this thought, Orwell created the masterpiece Animal Farm and Nineteen Eight-Four, which astonished the world and influenced several generations then. Orwellian—descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices—have been adopted by many international journalists. More than this, George Orwell’s works were translated into different languages and read by people of many different countries. The famous Chinese writer Lu Xun was seen as Chinese Orwell for his opinions about the people’s ignorance and passivity. Some scholars declared that more people read Orwell, more freedom would be guaranteed.