Compare And Contrast The Two Novels Animal

Farm? By George Orwell And ?Oliver Twist Essay, Research Paper

?Animal Farm? and ?Oliver Twist?, by George Orwell and Charles Dickens respectively,

are both novels written by two very different authors writing on a rather

similar theme. Both novels outline the subject of human suffering and it is the

authors? different choices of means by which they convey this that creates the

immediately apparent contrast. ????? Both writers write their novels in a

style new to their era; the awakening of social awareness targeted by Dickens

and his contemporary writers of the mid-Victorian period such as Thomas Carlyle

and William Morris, and Orwell?s originality in depicting the fate of

Bolshevism in Russia through anthropomorphism.?

Some have said that Dickens?s incentive to write Oliver Twist was that of bellicosity toward a female contemporary

of his literary age: Harriet Martineau. Dickens understood fully the propaganda

Martineau was incorporating in her novels and aside from the other causes of

his writing of Oliver Twist, he

wished to disseminate a contrary notion of ill-justice within the

infrastructure of industrialist Victorian England. The same can be said of

Orwell; he lived amidst the height of British imperialist power and felt that

in writing novels on the subject of communism, such as Animal Farm and Nineteen

Eighty-four, he could make the others aware of not only the idyllic nature

of communism as a working ideological principle, but its ultimate failings when

implemented imperfectly. Evelyn Waugh was a writer with whom Orwell shared the

style of writing that observed and commented upon politics, and Waugh satirised

the nature of bourgeois Britain that Orwell professed to disdain. Unlike

Orwell, however, Waugh was a Conservative man. And viewed communism not as a

wonderful alternative to capitalism but as an issue that at some point could

threaten it. In his book ?Brideshead

Revisited? Waugh told of the decline of the aristocracy and thereby

predicted a banal future of a classless society. This foresight can be

accredited to the nature in which Britain had fought the war; it was a war

whereby class mattered little for that brief period in history.????? ????? Oliver

Twist commences its first chapter under the heading: ?Treats

of the place where Oliver Twist was born, and of the circumstances attending

his birth.? ????? The

reader at this stage in his or her knowledge of the book?s content will not be

able to assume a great deal from this and it is possible that one may even

incorrectly anticipate a story of a wealthier boy as could have been told by a

contemporary of Dickens?, such as Martineau. However, any such thoughts are

dispelled promptly as the first few introductory paragraphs list instances of

suffering on the part of the child being delivered. Dickens may do this to make

the novel instantly appeal to those entranced in the type of novel he is

writing to oppose, or he may be aiming to begin the book with irony.? ?(p.1) ?For a long time after

it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble?it remained a matter of

doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all?? ????? Here it

can be observed that Dickens chooses to class the child as ?it?, as a means of showing the child?s unimportance and

insignificance. Immediately the reader can picture the unfortunate

circumstances the child has found himself begotten into and the theme of

suffering has started. ????? Animal

Farm opens immediately into an earnest and simple account of the neglectful

nature of a certain Mr. Jones, whom the reader can identify as a farmer. ?Mr.

Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night but was too

drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.? ????? In Animal

Farm, the deterioration of the animals? lives commences in the aftermath of

their revolt against Mr. Jones as they are made to suffer under the auspicious

and increasingly powerful pigs. The pigs, as the most intelligent animals on

the farm, take over in the role of the negligent farmer and inflict suffering

on the animals in the blatant inequality they create. This new way of life

contradicts the egalitarianism represented by ?Animalism? which is the

revolution?s political philosophy Orwell uses to encapsulate communism. It is

the degeneration of the animals? standard of living that perpetuates the

suffering theme surrounding this revolution and the reader is made fully aware

of the level of hardship present at the start of the novel during a speech made

by the elderly wise boar Old Major. ??????????????? (Animal Farm, p. 3) ?The life

of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.? (Animal

Farm, p. 4) ?And you, Clover, where

are those four foals you bore?? Each was sold at a year old? – you will never see one of them again? ????? Oliver

Twist ? ????? Unlike the excessively intricate

language used by Dickens, the language of Orwell is entirely succinct in its

use of terminology. The difference between the two narrators is upon first

sight obviously that of Dickens?s ornate style and Orwell?s conciseness but

also the two authors include irony in different forms to one another. Dickens

very often incorporates full-blown sarcasm to his text outside of dialogue

while Orwell?s is a more subtle irony. ??????????????? (Oliver Twist, p.22) ?A beadle

ordered to hold his tongue! A moral revolution!? ????? To show the overly high esteem the

beadle holds himself in as a member of society Dickens uses the narrator as a

clearly well educated gentleman, with a strong opinion on the matters of unfair

social standings, to mock the superciliousness of men such as the beadle

through sarcasm. The sarcasm he uses serves to depict the thoughts a beadle

would hold and the outrageousness of them. ??????????????? (Animal Farm, p. 37) ?All that

year the animals worked like slaves.? ????? The animals

actually are slaves in the regime of the pigs under whom they operate. Use of

such irony by Orwell demonstrates the way in which the animals still overlook

their terrible condition of living following the ousting of Mr. Jones and the

reign of ?Animalism? as a self-governing farm. The animals continue to see

their predicament as a great achievement following a time of what was deemed to

be of ill treatment and hardship; comparatively, the reader realises, the

animals lived better that way. In using this irony through his animal

characters Orwell can allegorically tell of the incidents of the Russia?s

communist affairs and the collective psychology behind its rise and downfall.

The peasants who fought under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky for communist

ideals to be implemented are represented as farm animals other than pigs ? who

represent leaders of the revolution ? and, while Orwell never tells anything

directly to us as to the feelings of the animals through narration, his irony

can tell us a great deal. In the above statement the reader is shown how the

peasants/animals fail to recognise the similarities between their lives prior

to revolution and subsequently to it. ????? In the two author?s use of irony through

their narrators there is, again, a difference. Orwell?s narrator is an

impartial person whose irony is the only insight given into the novel, while

Dickens presents his narrator as being a person who expresses opinion blatantly

through sarcasm in reference to the characters, their bigoted nature or their

superficiality. It could be said that Dickens? narrator is his self as the

narrator writes intricately like a well-learned human being, as Dickens grew to

be ultimately, and as a man or woman who feels strongly on the subject being

told of. ??????????????? (Oliver Twist, p. 253) ?It was

almost too much happiness to bear. Oliver felt stunned and stupefied by the

unexpected intelligence; he could not weep, or speak, or rest.? ????? Dickens

incorporates into his narrative writing in the novel a good deal of saddening

statements, such as the one quoted above, which keep a theme of suffering

running throughout the novel. Dickens? main source of suffering recounted in

Oliver?s life is as much a lack of happiness as it is actual hardship and

Dickens as a narrator ensures that this is reminded frequently to the reader. ????? Very little of Animal Farm is written through dialogue, therefore the entire novel

is mainly narrative recollections of events. In this the greatest form of

suffering following the Bolshevik Revolution is symbolised: the lack of

communication. The narrator mentions little correspondence between the animals

and Orwell?s deliberate omission of conversation relates the novel to

post-revolutionary Russia. The people of Russia were helpless to stop Stalin?s

reign of terror when there was no communication between population and

dictatorship and were, therefore, left without ability to break free. Furthermore,

whenever dialogue is used, it is largely that of the pigs in charge of the

farm; from this it could be observed that wherever Orwell has opted to use

speech he more often than not has that of the pigs showing that under Stalin

especially, whatever there was of the limited communication, it only came from

the powerful leaders.? ????? The general readership assume that both

authors denounce the oppression in both of the novels but Orwell remains fully

neutral in his criticism of the parties he writes of and creates an authorial

void thereof, whereby the reader has to fill this void to form an opinion of

the issue in hand. In the following quotation, the narrator writes about a

horrible event of carnage but shows absolutely no reaction or opinion. ??????????????? (Animal Farm, p.52-53) ?When

they had finished their confession, the dogs promptly tore their throats

out.?? ????? It is a widely acknowledged fact that

both George Orwell and Charles Dickens had socialist ideals, although it must

be remembered that Dickens lived through an age in which socialism existed only

as an ideal and not as a political doctrine or even a word. Dickens? experience

of politics is very much different to that of Orwell; communism, the politics

Orwell studied largely and was interested by, did not come officially into

being until the publication of The

Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848). Communism

affected Orwell a great deal and it affected the world equally; in 1980 four in

every ten human beings on the earth lived under a Marxist government. Dickens

did not have this considerable political monster hanging over his world as

communism existed in its infancy at this time; nor did Dickens have a World War

engaging around him, and nor did he know of global suffering. The two writers

wrote in entirely different ages but were pioneering authors of their

respective eras. ????? Suffering continues throughout both Animal Farm and Oliver Twist,not so much

as a theme but moreso as an inherent part of the lives of the characters.

Orwell scarcely directly mentions the suffering that his characters endure and

even when he does he deliberately only skims the surface of that suffering; he

chooses never to comment on the lies and propaganda the pigs use in their reign

over the animalist farm and merely reports them in the form in which they

occur. Dickens, however, ensures that the reader is aware of the message he is

conveying by using sarcasm and also on occasion highlighting injustices. ??????????????? (Oliver Twist, p.11) ?What a

noble illustration of the tender laws of England! They let the paupers go to

sleep!? ????? This

quotation serves to demonstrate further the sarcasm Dickens uses in his display

of content held against the hierarchy of his society and also the manner in

which he points out the suffering to the reader. The reader can also comprehend

from this Dickens? categorical accusation of the English hierarchy that they

are guilty of self-aggrandisement and self-congratulation on a successful and

noble society they believe themselves to have achieved. ??????????????? (Oliver Twist, p.222) ??a

weary catalogue of evils and calamities which hard men had brought upon him

(Oliver).????? ????? From this, though, one can see also the

way in which Dickens also chooses plainly and without irony to raise the

reader?s awareness of the suffering. The novel gains from Dickens? mixture of

ironical and direct narration a sense of awareness and consciousness in the

authorial voice, while the image of the author is continued as that of an

intellectually and politically aware person. A reader can draw from a

combination of irony and simplicity a feel of knowledge of the text in hand and

the subject being narrated on; this is how Dickens manages to achieve an

audience of mixed dispositions. Those whom writers such as Harriet Martineau

could attract would read Dickens for the epic tales he tells and those

interested in the nature of Dickens? political writing can also find the novel

of interest. ??????????????? (Animal Farm, p.46) ?Starvation

seemed to stare them in the face.? ??? ??Orwell,? however, mentions

suffering as it would be seen by the animals and not in a more complex way. The

animals remain blind to the oppression they endure under the pigs for a long

time and never once does the narrator represent events from a biased angle,

like the narrator of Oliver Twist

does. Dickens? narrator is a gentleman aware of the situation and he shows this

to his audience; Orwell?s narrator would not even be associated to a human

voice as it expresses no awareness it may have, unlike a human narrator would.

In Oliver Twist Oliver is more aware

of the sloth of his masters than the animals in Animal Farm, but he too is not fully conscious of the greed his

masters are guilty of. ????? Through Orwell?s use of narration it can

be observed that he wished for the novel not to be read by a widespread

readership but to be read by those whom he wished it to affect most: political

people and those of intellectual nature. Animal

Farm was Orwell?s method through which he interpreted the highly contentious

issue of Bolshevism and explained it to others who wished to think about it. ????? Therefore it can be concluded from what

has been said that both Oliver Twist and

Animal Farm?????????????