this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
24 points (90.0% liked)

Books

8017 readers
69 users here now

A community for all things related to Books.

Rules

  1. Be Nice. No personal attacks or hate speech.
  2. No spam. All posts should be related to discussion or reviews related to books. (Please avoid posts that are just a link to the book and a generic summary)
  3. No self promotion.

Official Bingo Posts:

Related Communities

Community icon by IconsBox (from freepik.com)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
dresden@discuss.online
dresden_do@lemmy.world
JaymesRS@literature.cafe
JaymesRS@lemmy.world
dresden@piefed.world
24
I didn't like animal farm that much (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 days ago by cinoreus@lemmy.world to c/books@lemmy.world
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

My biggest complaint was how thin the allegory was. Like, Orwell didn't have to use animal farms at all, it read like a history lesson for most parts. I felt between chapter 3 to chapter 8 were mostly just boring and pigs Doing a power capture slowly. Did chapter 3 to 8 help create the impact of chapter 9 and 10? Absolutely. Could they have been done better? I think so, it didn't have to be read like a history lesson.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jaded_genie@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What did you not enjoy? The content or style it was written? I didn’t get that part.

To me animal farm is still among the absolutely best books I have ever set my eyes on. Not for the reason it was written: communism, power. No, the very picture that it paints using animals: they are used and then discarded.

Looking at it at face value, this is happening in both communism and capitalism. It is a feature of how we organize our societies.

For me the book has never been a criticism of communism. But an eye opener how we use and abuse the world around us for our own benefit, no matter in which ideology we fall.

[–] cinoreus@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It's was a critique of authoritarianism, using example of communist ideologies, in my opinion.

I didn't like the style, like in history textbooks, how they gloss over minute details? That's what I felt about animal farm. Like, it felt like most of the animal farm was written by a distant observer, not someone who lives on the farm. Most notably the book lacked first person dialogues. It was almost entirely written in indirect speech, except for a few moments.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

I feel it is more about the human tendendcy toward authoritarianism. Like initially after throwing off the humans there are many improvements but they get slowly degraded. Actually maybe kinda about nationalism and such. Some see the issues and others blindly following the movement.

[–] lifeinlarkhall@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

I think that's kinda the point of allegories - they are timeless and open to interpretation. People read animal farm and can apply it to various parts of society, politics, philosophy. If it was too detailed and specific it would be MORE like a history book and just about the Russian Revolution. Which would likely not have had such a wide reach as it continues to have.