The social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental conditions of a particular era have an impact on the events and trends that we observe during that time. As a result, we risk misinterpreting or mistaking the meaning of a piece of writing we are reading if we are not familiar with the customs, culture, way of thinking, or events taking place at any point in history.
If you haven’t read the book, it tells the tale of a bunch of farm animals that plot against their farmer and take control of the farm themselves. As the story progresses, the newly independent animals struggle to decide who will rule the farm and how. After much drama, the story concludes with Napoleon the pig ruling as dictator and the farm reverting to its previous deplorable state before their uprising against the farmer.
Some people may think that this book sounds like a vibrant fictitious story or a spinoff of a kid’s cartoon from the description. But when you look at the historical context, you’ll discover that the tensions with the Soviet Union, its allies, and the Western world at the time, as well as the events leading up to the 1917 Russian Revolution, had a significant impact on this story. When this was published in the 1940s, a lot of people, including the English author, had highly conflicted opinions regarding Soviet Russia’s leader Joseph Stalin. Because of this, Animal Farm not only had trouble getting published, but it also didn’t achieve its current level of popularity until the Cold War.
Without knowing the background, it would be difficult for readers to infer that this book was a critique of the escalating political tensions with Russia and the rest of the globe between 1917 and 1946. The reader can better appreciate the author’s context and prejudice as well as why Orwell and the rest of the world would have the strong feelings depicted in the book by understanding the historical context of when and by whom this book was written.
