Reading Orwell: A Grim New World

Reading is more than a habit or fun activity for me, though it is both of those. It’s a way of life for me. Though I can’t recall the first book I ever read, I also can’t remember a time when I wasn’t reading something. Stories are my mind’s lifeblood—I think I would suffocate from a lack of mental air if I were ever to lose the ability to read.

One of the stories that I remember first making a significant impact on me is Animal Farm by George Orwell. I had a writing class on the dystopian novel in early high school, and though I only read it because it was assigned to me, it really affected how I viewed the world, history, and political ideologies. It opened a new world to me in the form of veiled parallels and pictorial parables, a startling message that is more adequately conveyed through what seems at first glance to be a children’s fairy tale, albeit a bit gruesome, in true Grimm Brothers fashion.

Prior to reading Animal Farm, I hadn’t realized that the world could be such a deceptively awful place, what is intially appearing as innocent and innocuous ultimately turning rotten and warped. Sure, I’d read about the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, the Cold War and its subtle terror, and many other tragedies and terrors of history. But I hadn’t understood how those came about, that the atrocities of dictators like Hitler and Stalin had such simple and, seemingly avoidable, beginnings.

Reading a historical account of an event is drastically different from reading a story of that same event, complete with plot, characters, tension, climax, resolution. That’s what is so powerful about a novel. Often from small, uncluttered origins, the conflict takes root more quickly and less noticeably than our brave hero or heroine always realizes. Before they can blink, they find themselves standing waist-deep in a problem that they didn’t know they had. The reader, inevitably, feels deeply on behalf of the characters and this is how Animal Farm drew me in to a larger world than I’d known before.

Though to an enlightened reader, it seems obvious what the animals in power are doing through their propagandizing and the twisted meanings of certain words and phrases (e.g. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”), Orwell is unflinchingly clear on how the masses are so easily manipulated and swayed. It highlights how mere idealism can rapidly deteriorate into actual violence and injustice, and that if we are not aware of what is happening around us in real time, we will miss our chance to put a halt to potentially damaging perspectives and policies that will entangle an unsuspecting nation if left alone.

Change is possible, if I care enough to see my world for what it is, and do something in my sphere of influence. Waves begin with the smallest of ripples, and the power of storytelling is the pebble tossed into the pond.