Wouldn’t It Be Cool If we learned from LITERATURE?
WIBCI we looked at Animal Farm by George Orwell through today’s lenses?
If you don’t know Animal Farm, that’s fine, all you need to know is the following speech is made by a pig to other farm animals from within a barn…. but I’ve made a few alterations and substitutions. I replaced the word ‘Animal‘ with ‘the Middle Class’, switched ‘Human/Human Beings’ for ‘Billionaires, Corporations and their Stooges’, ‘Man’ with ‘Greed’. Every alteration/substitution is in Bold:
I do not think, comrades, that I shall be with you for many months longer, and before I die, I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired. I have had a long life……and I think I may say that I understand the nature of life on this earth as well as any(one) now living. It is about this that I wish to speak to you.
Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; ……
No one in the middle class… knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is … old. No one from the middle class… is free. The life of the middle class is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No comrades, a thousand times no! the soil … is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance to an enormously greater number of the middle class…. and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by Billionaires, Corporations and their stooges. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word – Greed. Greed is the only real enemy we have. Remove Greed from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever……..
Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of Billionaires, Corporations and their stooges? Only get rid of Greed, and the produce of our labour would be our own. Almost overnight we could become rich and free.
– George Orwell Animal Farm
What do YOU think? Does it resonate today?
Last Updated on 08/15/2025 by Death of Hypatia Inc.
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