Talk:Animal Farm

edit request on 12 Dec 2018

Think is important to note that it was written in 1943. Source could be JOURNAL ARTICLE Revolution on Animal Farm: Orwell's Neglected Commentary V. C. Letemendia Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 18, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 127-137 (11 pages) at https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831551 where at P. 132 quoting Orwell author reports ... he did not mean pigs and men to appear reconciled completely at the end of the book. On the contrary "I meant it to end on a loud note of discord, for I wrote it immediately after the Teheran Conference [parodied by the final scene in Animal Farm] .." CEJL, III, pp. 459-59

Link for Preface

Here is a link for the preface. Can someone add it to main article, so that people know where the quote is coming from. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/

Stage adaptations of Animal Farm -- request for addition

I wish to note that the list of stage adaptations of "Animal Farm" in this article is incomplete. The first version, adapted by Nelson S. Bond and published by Samuel French, Inc. in 1964 (still in print) is still widely performed (example one) (example two) (example three)

Inferences

There are several cases where the reader of Animal Farm is clearly supposed to INFER something, but the book never explicitly says it, and one gathers that the animal characters in the book never do infer it. I think this is a very important part of Orwell's message: a lot of political lying is tacitly accepted without critical discussion. Occasionally Benjamin the donkey appears to see through the lying, but he never explicitly says anything about it, and one gathers that Orwell deliberately chose a donkey to symbolize the British liberal intelligentsia of his time.

In Plot, at the end of the 3rd paragraph, the article says "In truth, Napoleon had engineered the sale of Boxer to the knacker, allowing him and his inner circle to acquire money to buy whisky for themselves." The book never says that Napoleon did this, only says that after Boxer's death, from somewhere or other the pigs found enough money to buy the whiskey.

Under Animalism, the article says "Later, Napoleon and his pigs secretly revise some commandments to clear themselves of accusations of law-breaking." In each case, the book says that the non-pig animals had mis-remembered this or that commandment. 64.179.154.8 (talk) 19:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

If the article attributes things to the book that the book doesn't actually assert (i.e. if the article contains inferences), then those should either be backed up by reliable sources or ultimately removed as being original research. DonIago (talk) 19:59, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but it is literature, it's not going to follow the same rules as a history book. If the author spells everything out like that, it'd be poor writing usually. We're allowed to follow the analysis of the mainstream of literary critics in our exposition, particularly if there are 0% dissenting.

Do you think that maybe Napoleon didn't sell Boxer to the knackers to get whisky money? Or that the writer didn't intend for the reader to infer this? If you do, you'd be essentially alone among the millions of readers of the book. If you can find one single critic with any kind of reasonable standing (some expertise in the subject, and not a fringe nutcase, semi-literate clack-box, or troll) who states that, possibly we could talk. Herostratus (talk) 04:16, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

If critics have made these observations then it should be easy enough to provide sourcing for them, should it not? DonIago (talk) 06:02, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Not necessarily. It would probably be hard to find references for a number of things about the book, such as "the book is a three-dimensional object" or "the pages are made of paper". See WP:SKYISBLUE.

Part of Orwell's message is that a lot of political lying is tacitly accepted without critical discussion, but his mechanism for doing so is not making his descriptions vague so as to lead the reader to thoughts like "Hmmm, maybe the vet had recently bought the van from a knacker, and maybe Boxer was taken to hospital and cared for, and the pigs got their whisky money elsewhere, and Orwell, by giving a description that leads the reader to believe otherwise, is showing how this sort of thing works". You're way overthinking this. Again: if you can find one single writer saying this -- I'll loosen the criteria and say if you can find any human person saying this in print -- then we could talk, possibly. Can you? Herostratus (talk) 12:04, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this article explicitly asserts either that the book is a three-dimensional object or that the pages are made of paper? However, if it did, I would imagine that you could find an appropriate source at book or probably just add a citation to a dictionary. In the end, providing a source is, in my experience, the path of least resistance, versus arguing over the need for one.

In any case, us posting things that we're "supposed" to infer, no matter how "obvious" we might believe them to be, without providing supporting sources, is the textbook definition of original research. DonIago (talk) 15:27, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

To add my 2c, to say something is inferred without providing any sources is the epitome of WP:OR. Doctorhawkes (talk) 00:12, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, sure I can say it is a book and point to book as proof. I could also say the Queen Mary 2 is a book and point to book as proof. Book says nothing about Animal Farm or the Queen Mary. Book just says that a book is "typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover". Well that proves nothing. Perhaps Animal Farm is inscribed on clay tablets. Let us find a reliable source where a critic says "Animal Farm is an entity made of many pages made of paper bound together and protected by a cover". Sheesh.

Good grief. If you feel the need for refs for these sorts of things, find them and put them in yourselves. Here's the Cliffs Notes for the event, which says "[Boxer] lives (and dies) for the good of the farm — a farm whose leader sells him to a knacker the moment he becomes unfit for work" and "The scene in which Boxer is taken to his death...", so at least Cliffs Notes doesn't think he might have been actually taken to the hospital. That's all the work I'm going to do for you, for the rest, well, get to work.

But wait. Is Cliffs Notes reliable? It's just their personal opinion, isn't it. "Animal Farm is a book" is a statement of fact. It can be confirmed or falsified by getting a copy and looking at it and feeling it or subjecting it to number of reproducible scientific processes. "Boxer is taken to his death" is just somebody's opinion. It can never be proven or falsified. Apparently the fact we couldn't find even a dipsomaniac hobo or backward child who contests this doesn't seem to matter to you all.

If your answer is to throw up our hands and say "Cliffs Notes, Well jeez I've heard of them, so what they say must be objectively true", that isn't very satisfactory.

And so on with really anything that can't be scientifically demonstrated. John Rodden is used a ref here for some stuff. But who is John Rodden? An adjuct professor... [redacted]. He doesn't have an article here, which we do have about two million biographical articles here so take that as you will. So what if he decides that Old Major is a metaphor for Karl Marx rather than Alexander Humboldt. I could wear a tweed jacked with leather elbow patches and puff on a pipe and say the opposite. It's just something that can't be proven either way. So why are we taking this thing that might be true or might not, and saying that it is true. And so on.

But if you do have the personal opinion (again: opinions!) that for some reason what flows from Rodden's pen is objective truth, I'm sure he has something to say about Chapter 9 one way or the other. I don't have Rodden's book, but you all are the ones exercised about all this, so it's on you to go get a copy and figure out what the objective truth is about what happened to Boxer. Herostratus (talk) 06:41, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Is calling us the ones "exercised" about this after you've posted a message like this one intended to be ironic? DonIago (talk) 15:01, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

No it is not, because you all started it. Anybody can cause cause other people to get irritated by starting a thread taking a position like the one you all have, and sticking to it. Tell you what though. I'm not terribly interested in this turning into an insult party, so let's back off here. I'll come back in a while to look at the article and if anyone has done anything untoward to it, we'll take it from there. The article is what matters. Or, if you want to go on, we could have a WP:RFC I guess and get more eyes on it. You'll come prepared with evidence that you've sought instances of some person with reasonable standing indicating the Boxer was murdered and, after reasonable diligence, have been unable to do so, but that you did find at least one carbon-based life form which agrees with your proposition that Boxer having been murdered is dubious. Fair enough I guess. Herostratus (talk) 17:22, 24 September 2023 (UTC)