The Well-wrought Political Allegories by George Orwell

Masterpieces last forever. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), written in 1948 by George Orwell, depicts a world that is governed by dictatorship. People are classified into different classes in a hierarchical society, where the proles who sit at the very bottom were neglected as wild animals, engaging in labour work, uneducated and poor forever. However, “only proles and animals are free,” being outer party members who work for Big Brother in forging history, erasing words and doing whatever they are told is no better than being the proles. They are even intensely supervised and censored 24/7, not allowed to conduct any rebellious behaviour — including thinking.

Liberty, freedom of thought and human rights seem natural for me living in a democratic society, but it is such luxury for some others. What terrifies me is that this dystopia, addressed almost 80 years ago, still exists in 21st century. Until the year I was born, not even seemly very long ago, there had been a period when unorthodox was defined as a thought crime in Taiwan. Nowadays, some political units in other continents still employ such means.

Through Orwell’s vivid words that explain how “2+2=5” can be deemed a fact in Doublethink; if a man left no any evidence of his existence, he could never ever exist. Surprisingly, human minds are so easily manipulated, far more than we can imagine. In such the world with such the mindset, before power and fear, everything else is nothing.

Animal Farm, another classic English literature of George Orwell, was written before 1984. For me, Animal Farm could be deemed as a prequel of 1984, through which Orwell interpreted his idea in dictatorship with an allegory. Humans were depicted as vicious exploiters who enslaved the animals, which resulted in a rebellion by ‘four-legged or winged creatures’ against the ‘two-legs’.

It’s definitely not a novel notion nowadays that the icons representing justice corrupt. However, this concept seems to be immortal that most of the plots in Animal Farm inspired by the history are still ongoing events. Exploitation in communism always gradually develops with the starting point of ‘pursuing the maximisation in collective interest for public’ that turns sour. Just like the frog swimming in a slowly heated-up pot only realises its coming death while the water is boiling and fatal. The irony here lies in the depravation of the pigs who claimed to contribute to one another with their intelligence, but reinitiated the overthrown acts, deceived their comrades and bent the fact to suit their own needs, and eventually imitated humans to walk with two legs. The dictatorship is when the most significant commandment of the inscribed Animalism ‘all animals are equal’ could be extended to ‘’all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’, and the slogan chanted by sheep ’four legs good, two legs bad’ could be altered to ‘’four legs good, two legs better’.

As onlookers, we might be patronising and laughing at those ignorant animals not seeing through those pigs’ so obvious attempts. Howbeit, back in our reality, we are no different.