Animal Farm

My sister and I used to have a book called, Everything I Need to Know About Life, I Learned from my Cat.  Everything I need to know about Marxism, I learned from Animal Farm.  Life is full of little wee teachers, and the list could go on and on (Everything I Need to Know About Having an Inferiority Complex, I Learned from Summer Camp.  Everything I Need to Know About Eating, I Learned from Smokin’ Weed).  I once had a friend with a neurologist father and prodigious older sister, and she knew a lot early on, although it’s doubtful she grasped the significance of her absorbed knowledge.  When we were reading Orwell’s famous political commentary/satire in grade nine or so, she was the one who turned to me and said, in wise voice, “Snowball is supposed to be Trotsky.”  I think she might have also said, “Trotsky was cool.  Poor Trotsky.”

For several years after, I knew no more about the Russian Revolution than what she had told me about barnyard antics.  I still thought Rasputin was an evil sorcerer come back from the undead to nab Anastasia.  In reality, Rasputin was more like…well…let’s say…the unmentioned but most certainly over-involved pushy hairdresser of the wife of Mr. Jones, the farmer who exits at the beginning of Animal Farm.  You dig?  Forget that Rah-Rah-Rasputin nonsense – whispers and lies, whispers and lies.

Animal Farm is a book about a bunch of farm animals (surprise!) who take over the homestead.  The socialist leaders Lenin, Stalin and Cool Trotsky are represented by pigs named, respectively, Old Major, Napoleon, and Snowball.  A kindly old draft horse is the hardworking but dimwitted proletariat.  The mean ol’ farmer of neighbouring land is Hitler and the Nazis.  A gang of puppies are Stalin/Napoleon’s secret police.  As anyone who’s read 1984 could tell you, Orwell was highly critical of contemporary socialism and believed it to be basically flypaper for corruption.  Just like in real life, things down on the A.F. get messy.  Spoiler: Snowball kicks the bucket – one might even say he buys the farm (HAHAHA).  But you know the score – or do you?  Canadian History teachers masturbate to the idea of having a political history half as scandalous as Russia’s.  For example, I heard that one reason Stalin was ultimately able to oust Trotsky was that J.S. lied to L.T. about the date of Lenin’s funeral, telling him it was one day later than it actually was.  As a result, HAWTsky was absent at the proceedings, smearing his good commie name in the mud of apparent disrespect.  Total bummer, L.T.!

That, and Rasputin was never undead.