Animal Farm / George Orwell

Title: Animal Farm 

Author: George Orwell

Subjects: Classic; Fantasy; Fiction; Children 

According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. It is a satirical tale against Stalin. Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels. 

The Pagan / George Orwell

So here are you, and here am I,

Where we may thank our gods to be;

Above the earth, beneath the sky,

Naked souls alive and free.

The autumn wind goes rustling by

And stirs the stubble at our feet;

Out of the west it whispering blows,

Stops to caress and onward goes,

Bringing its earthy odours sweet.

The Lesser Evil / George Orwell

Empty as death and slow as pain

The days went by on leaden feet;

And parson's week had come again

As I walked down the little street.

Without, the weary doves were calling,

The sun burned on the banks of mud;

Within, old maids were caterwauling

A dismal tale of thorns and blood.

Poem From Burma / George Orwell

Brush your teeth up and down, brother,

Oh, brush them up and down!

All the folks in London Town

Brush their teeth right up and down.

Oh! How they shine!

Aren't they bloody fine?

Night and morning, my brother,

Oh brush them up and down!"

Our Minds Are Married / George Orwell

Our minds are married, but we are too young

For wedlock by the customs of this age

When parent homes pen each in separte cage

And only supper-earning songs are sung.

Times past, when medieval woods were green,

Babes were betrothed, and that betrothal brief.

Remember Romeo in love and grief—

Those star-crossed lovers—Juliet was fourteen.

Kitchener / George Orwell

No stone is set to mark his nation’s loss,

No stately tomb enshrines his noble breast;

Not e’en the tribute of a wooden cross

Can mark this hero’s rest.

He needs them not, his name untarnished stands,

Remindful of the mighty deeds he worked,

Footprints of one, upon time’s changeful sands,

Who ne’er his duty shirked.

Ironic Poem About Prostitution / George Orwell

When I was young and had no sense

In far-off Mandalay

I lost my heart to a Burmese girl

As lovely as the day.

Her skin was gold, her hair was jet,

Her teeth were ivory;

I said, "for twenty silver pieces,

Maiden, sleep with me".

Awake! Young Men of England / George Orwell

OH! give me the strength of the Lion,

The wisdom of reynard the Fox

And then I’ll hurl troops at the Germans

And give them the hardest of knocks.

Oh! think of the War Lord’s mailed fist,

That is striking at England today:

And think of the lives that our soldiers

Are fearlessly throwing away.

A Little Poem / George Orwell

A happy vicar I might have been

Two hundred years ago

To preach upon eternal doom

And watch my walnuts grow;

But born, alas, in an evil time,

I missed that pleasant haven,

For the hair has grown on my upper lip

And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

Reflections On Gandhi / George Orwell

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases. In Gandhi's case the questions on feels inclined to ask are: to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity - by the consciousness of himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power - and to what extent did he compromise his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are inseparable from coercion and fraud? To give a definite answer one would have to study Gandhi's acts and writings in immense detail, for his whole life was a sort of pilgrimage in which every act was significant. But this partial autobiography, which ends in the nineteen-twenties, is strong evidence in his favor, all the more because it covers what he would have called the unregenerate part of his life and reminds one that inside the saint, or near-saint, there was a very shrewd, able person who could, if he had chosen, have been a brilliant success as a lawyer, an administrator or perhaps even a businessman.

Why I Write / George Orwell

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

Future Of A Ruined Germany / George Orwell

As the advance into Germany continues and more and more of the devastation wrought by the Allied bombing planes is laid bare, there are three comments that almost every observer finds himself making. The first is: 'The people at home have no conception of this.' The second is, 'It's a miracle that they've gone on fighting.' And the third is, 'Just think of the work of building this all up again!'

Can Socialists Be Happy? / George Orwell

The thought of Christmas raises almost automatically the thought of Charles Dickens, and for two very good reasons. To begin with, Dickens is one of the few English writers who have actually written about Christmas. Christmas is the most popular of English festivals, and yet it has produced astonishingly little literature. There are the carols, mostly medieval in origin; there is a tiny handful of poems by Robert Bridges, T.S. Eliot, and some others, and there is Dickens; but there is very little else. Secondly, Dickens is remarkable, indeed almost unique, among modern writers in being able to give a convincing picture of happiness.

Mark Twain The Licensed Jester / George Orwell

Mark Twain has crashed the lofty gates of the Everyman library, but only with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, already fairly well known under the guise of "children's books" (which they are not). His best and most characteristic books, Roughing It, The Innocents at Home, and even Life on the Mississippi, are little remembered in this country, though no doubt in America the patriotism which is everywhere mixed up with literary judgement keeps them alive.

Spilling The Spanish Beans / George Orwell

The Spanish war has probably produced a richer crop of lies than any event since the Great War of 1914-18, but I honestly doubt, in spite of all those hecatombs of nuns who have been raped and crucified before the eyes of Daily Mail reporters, whether it is the pro-Fascist newspapers that have done the most harm. It is the left-wing papers, the News Chronicle and the Daily Worker, with their far subtler methods of distortion, that have prevented the British public from grasping the real nature of the struggle.

Bookshop Memories / George Orwell

When I worked in a second-hand bookshop – so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios – the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all.

A Hanging / George Orwell

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

Shooting An Elephant / George Orwell

In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.