Line one of this book includes, “Mr. Jones… was too drunk to remember to shut up the pop holes… He then drew himself a last glass of beer”. Despite this being made into a cute animated kids movie, Orwell was not writing a neat story about animals for small children. That is the big thing for Christian parents to understand right up front. There is a lot to learn from this tale. The rest of this review will help you figure out whether it is a resource for your particular child and where God has them today.
There are a few more graphic lines about the fate of animals, such as “But no animal will escape the cruel knife in the end”. We are told that for old dogs the farmer “ties a brick around their necks and drowns them in the nearest pond”. A horse strikes a man with his hind legs, saying it “stretched him out lifeless”. A set of hens “were slaughtered”. A rumor of a farmer says he “flogged an old horse to death… killed a dog by throwing it into the furnace”. A gander is said to have “committed suicide”. An unkind animal remarks, “War is war. The only good human being is a dead one”. In the most intense moment as far as violence a set of dogs attacked four pigs and “tore their throats out”. Upon capture a farmer is to be “boiled alive”. During a battle three men’s “heads broken” by a horse’s hoof and another “gored”.
Similarly, when the adjacent farmers start to spread lies (representing propaganda) about the animal-run farm, saying they “practiced cannibalism, tortured one another with red-hot horseshoes, and had their females in common”.
As the book shows page after page, chapter after chapter where communism and its inevitable corruption leads the feeling certainly gets heavy. An older animal bleakly shares that “hunger, hardship and disappointment” are “the unalterable law of life”. The reader can certainly feel this weight.
The animal character that seems to be intended to represent a religious viewpoint is certainly not accurate or flattering. It feels like religion catches a stray in the author’s criticism of communism (we saw references to the author himself being a socialist). This animal, the raven, is said to tell of “a mysterious country called Sugar Mountain, to which all animals went when they died… somewhere up in the sky… it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all year round” and similar things. And just in case we have any doubt that religion is supposed to be seen in a negative light, we are then sadly told that this character “never worked”.
Finally, there are a good bit of references to alcohol, several by name (e.g., whiskey, beer). it is certainly not glorified, as it is the “bad” characters who get drunk multiple times.