Animal Farm Mass Market Paperback – Standard Edition, April 6, 2004

Great book, but my copy is almost unreadable. Anywhere in the book where the letters "iv" are together, i.e. live, given, etc. the word is broken up with "Chapter IV" in the middle. As in gChapter IVen. Or how about prChapter IVately. Very disappointed that this would be put out. Add paragraph breaks mid-sentence and you now have a literary nightmare.

Just noticed this date on the last page. This the date I ordered it. No publisher. Almost seems bootleg-ish....

I want my money back.

The book itself is great - no issues with the book. This kindle version, however, is a travesty. There is not a single paragraph without a glaring typo. It's as if they just scanned the pages of a print version, let the OCR run wild, and did zero proofreading afterwards. Examples include "expect" instead of "except," "to" instead of "too," missing words, punctuation in the wrong place, etc.

It's so distracting, that I had stop reading at the beginning of chapter 7, and get a different version. Do yourself a favor and skip this version.

In the 21st century, when we believe that everything is evolving around us and that all countries are moving forward, we realize that there is still a parasite which it is difficult to get rid of.
Countries that had the opportunity to evolve, have had to pass a difficult test of not falling into totalitarianism and ambition. Such was the case of some countries of the Soviet Union that achieved liberation, but still others continue to fall into the same abyss from which they can't rise, or don't want to, since that parasite has crawled in the mind of their crowd, as did happen in North Korea, China, etc.
Animal Farm shows the perfect example of how the unhealthy idea of ​​a cheap Socialism began to take root to become a dictatorial Communism, as it happens in Venezuela today. Its strange end leaves a bitter taste that perhaps the writer did on purpose to open the consciousness of future generations. An open ending that forces the reader to ask himself: what is the solution? And how will it end?
Through human experiences of the animals of this farm, we can identify this truth that still lingers in some shady societies of the present. The solution is in our hands. It will depend on the degree of preparation, culture, moral values, determination, and courage people have to free their homeland and achieve a better future. Remember governments must fear the people and not the opposite.
After that, I summarize my point of view about the strongest references dealt with through the characters in this book (that can be easily identify and distinguished when you start to read the story) in the following sections:
1) Leaders full of charisma who manage to enter the hearts of the crowd by their power of conviction. They choose the most insecure sectors and people to whom they inject large doses of false trust and dependence, and then use them in the propagation of their miserable revolution.
2) From the beginning, they call a supposed self-identification and self-recognition through rhythmic and flattering slogans. They remember again and again their few and poor achievements that remain in the distant past. Then, they impose a barrier of differences between them and the supposed enemy. In this way, the people is infused with a nationalism that is based on ignorance, fear, and blind reverence, forcing them to repeat proverbs and apply reforms without understanding the true meaning or purpose, thus beginning to resemble a herd of sheep, marching pleased towards the slaughterhouse.
3) They make the crowd believe that they have the final decision and, for the common good, unconsciously follow the rules and imposed parameters. In addition, some extra benefits are allowed to those who follow and protect the regime indulgently. This is how they teach the majority that it is better to be corrupt, dishonest, and negligent, in order to achieve higher ranks.
4) The regime feel entitled to legalize and abolish what suits it, ordering the people what to eat, how to dress, greet and live, and what to learn, while they live freely at the expense of the efforts of others and of the injustices committed, trampling the honor of an entire country and their own Machiavellian socialist laws.
5) What seemed a worthy plan for community, social, intellectual, and economic development, now shows the true intention that tries to kill the spirit of solidarity to impose the dictatorial and even genocidal plan, if the regressive revolution warrants it.
6) Everyone, even the majority of the crowd, realize that revolutionary projects are a total failure when they find themselves amidst of aberrant poverty.
7) When they want to discredit an opponent or other progressive ideas, they use their famous method of defamation with lies, intimidation, and any other means. For them, the aim (maintain / save the revolution) justifies the means (spreading false rumors, prosecutions, torture, hunger, espionage), importing in the least the opinion of others, since their own people live in ignorance, cowardice and/or conformism.
8) To finally protect their interests and ideals, communists surround themselves with and associate with allies of their own class: corrupt, traffickers, murderers and terrorists, and expand their power further through the destruction of every vital block of a society , from its financial structure to public sectors, such as health, without caring about the misery that people live. To rule the ignorant and negligent is much easier.
9) There comes a time when the revolutionary-communist doctrine is so deeply rooted in the consciences, that the people forget how well they lived before. The most outrageous thing is that there are still people who support such regimes and whose can mental programming is so easily influenced on behalf the sadistic needs and convenience of these cunning and malevolent rulers.
Times before the Rebellion are being left in the past, where the memories struggle to keep them safe to share them with others

This edition is really messed up. It ends on page 70 and starts back up on a page 103. Coincidentally because that page doesn’t end the sentence and page 103 doesn’t start a sentence, my middle school age son, continue to read it without noticing. When he went to take the comprehension test he had to stop the test in the middle because it was asking questions about things he never read. When he went through the book carefully we realized it’s completely missed printed and is missing about 30 pages!

Animal Farm is a prescient reflection on politics - and the perennial gap between well-meaning aspirations, and the reality of their pursuit.

Any authoritarian regime in the world, viewed under the light of the events following the rebellion in this Animal Farm, shows the tyranny of their ideals unravel in the same mendacious manipulation, brutal administration and kin subjugation.

Written in the winter of 1943, this short novel still reflects deep patterns and truths about authoritarian regimes. The resilience of elites, with their omnipresent paranoia, imaginary enemies, violent enforcement of their arbitrary whims, vulgar bureaucracy and secretive hedonism; the constant editing and re visioning of history; the abuse of statistical rhetoric; the single-minded pursuit of meaningless goals; the hatred of commerce, and the irony of its unavoidable necessity; the populace's ignorance that helps elites skew the rules to their benefit, aided by their almost childish obsession with symbols; the opportunism of religious elites, and their uncanny ability to retain some power - regardless of who holds more of it.

This fascinating fable still manages to mirror some of the failed revolutionary experiments that unfold around the world.

The more universal the theme, the more simply the story needs to be told. In this case, the nasty human tendency to elevate self above others is portrayed through the lives of barnyard pals after they awaken to their disadvantaged status vis-a-vis the farmer. Spoiler alert: the pigs ultimately co-opt the trust (and hard work) of their fellow barnyard pals in order to "elevate" themselves to a life of mean-spirited debauchery. But it's the description of how they get there that makes this an important, revelatory work. The role of small lies, the other animals' various tendencies that actively or passively enfranchise the pigs, and time itself churn out more misery than the farmer himself could ever have doled out, even as the eventual arbiter of their demise. The work shows us a host of all-too-familiar "tactics," and how, under certain circumstances, they can form a totalizing narrative that no one can see their way out of. A warning about Stalinism, but also those in every walk of life who would employ stalinesque methods to promote their agendas.