--- title: Animal Farm 75th Anniversary: Relevance in 2020 description: Author Téa Obreht explains why George Orwell's classic 'Animal Farm' is still relevant 75 years after its original publication. canonical: https://time.com/5880178/george-orwell-animal-farm-still-relevant/ author: Téa Obreht article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-08-17T17:16:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:58.120Z article:section: Ideas og:title: We’re Still Living in the World That Inspired 'Animal Farm'—75 Years Later og:description: Reading George Orwell's classic in 2020 og:url: https://time.com/5880178/george-orwell-animal-farm-still-relevant/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltac2521e5331e4e95/698a1168e76ad2f70b638030/animal-farm-books-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: animal-farm-books-1 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: We’re Still Living in the World That Inspired 'Animal Farm'—75 Years Later twitter:description: Reading George Orwell's classic in 2020 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltac2521e5331e4e95/698a1168e76ad2f70b638030/animal-farm-books-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # We’re Still Living in the World That Inspired _Animal Farm_—75 Years Later > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: The Ongoing Story Behind the Netflix Documentary "Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul” [Watch (HLS stream): The Ongoing Story Behind the Netflix Documentary "Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul”](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/us8OUyv1.m3u8) (4:08)  _Published 2023-10-20. TIME health correspondent Jamie Ducharme talks about her book and documentary, Big Vape. The Rise and Fall of Juul_ by [Téa Obreht](https://time.com/author/tea-obreht/) ## Téa Obreht Aug 17, 2020 5:16 PM UTC  by [Téa Obreht](https://time.com/author/tea-obreht/) ## Téa Obreht Aug 17, 2020 5:16 PM UTC It’s been 75 years since the comrades of the once (and future) Manor Farm first took up the anthem “Beasts of England” and surprised themselves by routing out the tyrant farmer, Mr. Jones, from his holdings. Seventy-five years since the seemingly inalterable tenets of Animalism were scrawled in white paint on the side of the barn, and the enthusiastic dreamer Snowball strove for his short-lived utopia before running afoul of the Berkshire boar Napoleon’s autocratic ambitions. In the decades since the publication of [George Orwell’s](https://time.com/3903841/review-nineteen-eighty-four-history/) seminal work of anti-Stalinist satire, we have seen the collapse of the regime that disturbed and inspired its author; the beginning and end of the Cold War, with all its attendant horrors; and the rise and fall of any number of would-be Napoleons, both at home and abroad. [_Animal Farm_](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780451526342), once a work so controversial that it seemed unlikely to find a publisher, has served for so long, and in so many school curriculums, as the predominant introduction to the concept of totalitarianism that it is in danger of being perceived as trite. With _Animal Farm_, [Orwell](https://time.com/5602363/george-orwell-1984-anniversary-surveillance-capitalism/)—then a 42-year-old democratic socialist known primarily for essays and journalism exploring social injustice and class iniquities across Europe—hoped only to dissuade his countrymen from what he recognized as a dangerous infatuation with Joseph Stalin. It is indisputable that an author’s intentions for his or her work usually don’t survive publication, let alone the author’s death. Nothing of [_Animal Farm’s_](https://entertainment.time.com/2010/07/09/top-10-books-you-were-forced-to-read-in-school/slide/animal-farm/) success during Orwell’s lifetime could really augur the varied purposes it would come to serve, or the global behemoth it would quickly become. Pushing back on a critique that Orwell was too light-handed in his reproach of totalitarianism, Julian Symons wrote, “In a hundred years’ time perhaps, _Animal Farm_ may be simply a fairy story, today it is a political satire with a good deal of point.” That was then, and this is now. Luckily, having spent the last seven and a half decades heeding its warnings and taking its lessons to heart, we have pulled ahead of the dangers [_Animal Farm_](https://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/animal-farm-1946-by-george-orwell/) hinted we might one day face. As a species, we have defied Orwell’s wildest expectations. Wouldn’t he be thrilled to know that we no longer have need of a text that so explicitly decries authoritarianism, fearmongering, tribalism, historical erasure, factual manipulation and war as an engine of national pride? Reader, I jest. All evidence points to the fact that we’re in a great deal of very familiar trouble the whole world over. That we so dependably manage to be, despite the existence of prophetic works like _Animal Farm_, should worry us to the point of despair. But this is the way of our species: memory fades. We grow bored with the lessons of the past. We tell ourselves: things could never get as bad as they once were because, unlike those who came before us, we are good people who know better than to let it happen again. --- ### More from TIME --- How, then, are we to read _Animal Farm_ circa 2020? I was raised in the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1980s, in a household and culture gripped by the distinction between “indoor” and “outdoor” talk. Understanding this was as essential to my early upbringing as table manners or the correct protocol for crossing the street. The gist was: certain conversations were appropriate for public consumption, while others belonged only within the confines of the house. You were expected to use your common sense to distinguish between the two as you grew older, but your starting point was to assume that anything overheard at the dinner table qualified as indoor talk and was not to be discussed with people outside the home; that is, outdoors. You think I’m talking about politics here, reader, but I’m not. Politics was so out of bounds that I can’t remember any adult ever declaring support for any candidate in my presence until we moved to America. I’m talking about simple details of daily existence: a new pencil case that might be misconstrued as a sign of increased wealth, or a sandwich that might give a nosy stranger on a train some false idea about the demographic composition of our family because one of its ingredients may or may not be a certain kind of ham. People incapable of recognizing the distinction between indoor and outdoor talk—people who might volunteer, a little too eagerly, the outcome of some private development, or some holiday plan, or, the worst of all sins, the affairs of some mutual acquaintance—were to be regarded with disdain and suspicion. For if they didn’t value the sanctity of their own indoor talk, imagine the damage they could inflict if they somehow got ahold of yours! I have been living in America for 23 years and still have a hair trigger where indoor talk is concerned. This will be with me forever, I suspect, probably hardwired in some remote twist of trauma-blitzed DNA inherent in people worn down by centuries of imperialism and political volatility. Perhaps that’s why, when I did eventually read _Animal Farm_—sometime in 1997, no doubt, in a suburb of Atlanta where my mother and I eventually wound up after spending most of the Yugoslav Wars in Cyprus and Egypt—the character with whom I felt the most kinship was Benjamin the Donkey. I was heartbroken by the heavily foreshadowed death of Boxer the horse, who seemed to stand for so much of what was good and true; but all I really cared about was whether his little donkey friend would successfully dodge a similar fate. Benjamin is Boxer’s closest companion. A cynic of uncertain age, he is known for having outlived all his peers by keeping steadfastly silent. _Animal Farm_ scholars have often cast him as the allegorical stand-in for Russia’s disillusioned older generation, as wary of the Revolution as they were of the tsarist society it dismantled. And indeed, in his keep-it-close-to-the-vest reticence, I recognized many of my grandparents’ tendencies: an obsession with common sense; a potent distrust of propaganda; a tendency to eye roll at naïveté; and above all, a really keen sense of the difference between indoor and outdoor talk. Benjamin is a survivor. But his carefully maintained silence comes crashing down when his dear friend, Boxer, is carted off to Willingdon after succumbing to labor and age. Though Squealer persuades the other animals that Boxer is, of course, bound only for the animal hospital to receive care, Benjamin finally breaks with precedent to tell them the terrible truth he has always been literate enough to know: the van taking Boxer away bears the insignia of the dreaded knacker, and Boxer is going to his doom. With the death of what is arguably the book’s most beloved character, Orwell shows us the futility of Benjamin’s revelation. It is too late for fraternal duty to override self-preservation. The notion that Western countries are clever and strong enough to both recognize and resist the grip of totalitarianism is a dangerous myth. A fairy story, if you will—one to which we are ironically susceptible, because being shaped by _Animal Farm_ deludes us into thinking we are sufficiently armed. “We already know what we need to know,” we might say. “We all know that individuality is a form of resistance, and that anyone who hungrily pursues power is probably unworthy of attaining it.” Here’s some formerly indoor talk: too many of us take our freedoms for granted. Even now, those of us who never grew up fearing the dangers of indoor talk are far too cozy in the belief that we are safe from the forces that could plunge us back into a world that demands it. _Animal Farm_ asks us to work against that delusion. We are making great strides in this direction already. In opening up about the persistent, daily injustices that shape life—micro- and macroaggressions, racial profiling, police brutality, exploitation of body and mind, intolerance, erasure, assault, exclusion—even the most disenfranchised among us have found themselves wielding, if even for a moment, sudden and unprecedented power to enact change that once took a lifetime. At our best, we are able to stand with and for one another like never before. We celebrate one another’s rights to individuality, expression, faith and love. We have a quarter century to test Julian Symons’ hopeful prediction, and usher _Animal Farm_ into the niche of fairy stories. I am not sure even that is time enough. It’s entirely possible that we will never live in a world free of Napoleons and the Squealers who prop them up; that we will always find ourselves peering through windows, unable to tell the difference between the people who claim to be serving our interests and the enemies to whom they have betrayed us. But it’s also possible that we will never be isolated enough to keep signs of danger to ourselves as we once did; that we will openly decry every change to our commandments and insist on reiterating the history we know to be true, however terrible its contents. It is possible that we will recognize, without the blinders of Squealer’s “proper perspective,” that danger to one is danger to all; that we will read the knacker’s signage aloud, for all to hear, before it’s too late. _From_ [ANIMAL FARM](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780451526342) _published by arrangement with Berkley/Signet Classics, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 1946, Harcourt Inc. Copyright © renewed 1977, Sonia Brownell Orwell. Introduction Copyright © 2020, Téa Obreht._ ## Transcript My name is Jamie Ducharme. I'm a health correspondent at Time Magazine and the author of big Vape. The incendiary rise of Jewel, which was the inspiration for the Netflix series, big Vape, the rise and fall of juul nearly 2,000. There was a sense that could do no wrong to move fast and break things. Big Vape follows the rise of juul labs, which is an e-cigarette company that set out to make a vaping device that could make cigarettes obsolete. But instead, what happened is Jules became incredibly popular among teenagers and countless young people across. The us became addicted to juul. I wrote my book over the course of 2020 and it came out in mid 2021. And at that time, the story of Jewel and The Vaping industry was still evolving a lot of things for influx and changing. And that has continued over the more than two years since the book came out. Many of those developments were included in the Netflix series, but even the series ended, before the story of Jewel, head wrapped up. I don't think anyone could have anticipated, how many children would want this product is cuz Jewel became so popular with teenagers. The company was sued repeatedly by school districts by State Attorneys General by individual kids and families who alleged that Jewel had wrongfully addicted, young people to nicotine and over the course of the past few years Jewel has paid almost three billion dollars to settle these various lawsuits which has been understandably, a huge financial hit for the company using e-cigarettes today, an increase of 3 million in just two years ago, where they had applied for FDA authorization, which they need to keep their products on the market in the US. But the FDA hadn't decided either way, whether they would grant that. And then in June of 2022, the FDA decided that Jules had not met the stand. Did the FDA has set and ordered them off. The market will very quickly appealed that decision and the FDA agreed to do a second review of the company's data, which more than a year later is still ongoing. So it's still kind of unclear what the future of juul will hold. So interesting Lee even though jewels and tire problem as a company, was that too many teenagers were using it over the years. Teenagers have kind of moved on most of them who Vape are not using to let this point, they are using cheaper single-use disposable e-cigarettes, which because they are regulated differently than reusable products. Like Jewel still come in tons and tons of flavors, do seem to be really appealing to underage. Users disposable E-cigarettes are actually regulated even less than reusable e-cigarettes like Jewel, most of the companies on the market at this point have not gone through any FDA review process. So they're technically sold illegally, but the FDA has an incredibly difficult job ahead of it and trying to Tamp down this ever-growing Market, where tons of companies are entering the market all the time, they're importing products from overseas. So the FDA has a huge job in his hand. One thing that has remained constant in the five years I've been reporting on vaping is that researchers cannot agree about what the role of e-cigarettes should. Be some feel very strongly that e-cigarettes can help adult smokers quit and help them transition to a product that is not completely safe, but safer or less dangerous. Other researchers think that e-cigarettes really just prolong nicotine addiction and don't do a great job of helping smokers quit and are potentially damaging to their house and raising the risk of things like heart disease, and lung disease. So researchers take extremely different views on the question of whether E-cigarettes are good or bad, but I think there is, I know there is Broad agreement that anybody who is not currently using tobacco products of any kind, should not start. 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