The story of the book Animal Farm

First, I shall look at the life of the author. Eric Arthur Blair was born on June 25^th, 1903 in India and moved to England with his family in 1911. He went to school in England and was a very smart child, later he went to Eton college in England and studied there from 1917 to 1921. After he completed collage rather than going to a university (where he could have earned many scholarships) he traveled back to India to become a member of the Indian Imperial Police. He never gave up his passion for writing while he was there and wrote several books about his experiences.

 He later came back to Europe and chose to live a poorer life and lived with laborers and beggars. This was because he hated imperialism and was very against the bourgeoisie lifestyle and the upper class. His dislike of imperialism and his rather different political beliefs caused him to begin calling himself a socialist however, he never went so far as to become a communist. Later in his life he fought in the Spanish civil war and there he fought against communist forces and was injured, because of these wounds he was later rejected from service in world war 2 and instead joined the BBC to become a writer. Around this time was when he wrote animal farm in 1943 although he could not find a publisher until 1945.

When Orwell wrote Animal Farm he used it as an artistic way to show his political views and what he thought was a more truthful view of what Stalin had turned the USSR into since the revolution. Writing this book was his way of trying to alter the fact that many people at the time thought of Stalin as a good guy including many aristocrats and government officials because of his help defeating Germany in world war 2. He wrote the book mostly as a warning against what was happening in Russia and was trying to show the dangers of totalitarianism and the government that Stalin was running.

Obviously getting such a politically polarizing book to be published was difficult at that time especially because the west still supported the USSR. This friendship between the west and the USSR caused many publishers not to want to publish something against their ally and because of this the book was only published at the end of the war. Orwell before this also had yet to have any major success when writing as this was his first successful book therefore he did not have any fame to support the publication of his book.

When Animal Farm was finally published it was a major success selling over 600000 copies in the United States alone within only 4 years of its release. The massive success and the political potency of the book made it a good target to be turned into propaganda with the US government making an animated film of the book with slight alterations as anti-communist propaganda once the cold war had started.