Myanmar Animal Kingdom

One of my favourite “fairy stories” is ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell. This is one of the educating books with a hidden message .This ANIMAL FARM somehow had a special place in my heart as a classics/satire reflecting our country. I have attempted the merging of the Animal Farm story into the Burma/Myanmar scene. I hope some one will be able to write the full adaptation of this animal firm in Burmese Language later.

TQ Yemin Nyinyi for this picture

Comparing the Unique Characters of 1984, Animal Farm and Burmese Days

Source: Comparing the Unique Characters of 1984, Animal Farm and Burmese Days

George Orwell, an alias of Eric Arthur Blair, is know for the books 1984 and Animal Farm. In both of these, as well as in most of his others, he seems to delight in using vivid and wholly believable characters, easily believable because of their obvious and tragic faults. Another similarity seems to be the consistent use of irony, a stylistic choice which plays big in Burmese Days and in several other works. Also, Blair enjoyed placing his characters in situations and settings that were out-of-the- ordinary, constantly reversing or switching roles. It is a mark of talent that he is able to use all of these so effectively, making us believe the unbelievable and accept the incredible at the same time that he makes us emphasize with the characters and see similarities between them and ourselves, long after they were written.

Animal Farm

Orwellian:behaviours of State and The Party

Cover of Animal Farm: Centennial Edition

The adjective Orwellian refers to these behaviours of State and The Party, especially when the Party is the State:

• Invasion of personal privacy, either directly physically or indirectly by surveillance.
• State control of its citizens’ daily life, as in a “Big Brother” society.
• Official encouragement of policies contributing to the socio-economic disintegration of the family.
• The substitution of traditional religion with the adoration of state leaders and their Party.
• The encouragement of “doublethink“, whereby the population must learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent, e.g. giving up liberty for freedom. Similar terms used, are “doublespeak“, and “newspeak“
• The revision of history in the favour of the State’s interpretation of it.
• A (generally) dystopian future.
• The use of euphemism to describe an agency, program or other concept, especially when the name denotes the opposite of what is actually occurring. E.g. a department that wages war is called the “Ministry of Peace” or Ministry of Defence.” (=Almost Every country in this world is using this term)

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Cover of Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four (sometimes written 1984) is a 1949 dystopian novel by George Orwell about an oligarchical, collectivist society. Life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control. The individual is always subordinated to the state, and it is in part this philosophy which allows the Party to manipulate and control humanity. In the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue, in Newspeak), protagonist Winston Smith is a civil servant responsible for perpetuating the Party’s propaganda by revising historical records to render the Party omniscient and always correct, yet his meagre existence disillusions him to the point of seeking rebellion against Big Brother, eventually leading to his arrest, torture, and conversion.