Box of delight

Zhivago, but an animated adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Anybody could have seen the anti-Soviet propaganda value of George Orwell's satirical, allegorical tale in which livestock overtake their farm from its human owners and turn, without hesitation, into illogical tyrants.

A few weeks ago, we featured George Orwell's 1944 letter [http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-explains-in-a-revealing-1944-letter-why-hed-write-1984.html ] revealing the ideas that would lead him to write his still widely read, and even more widely assigned, novel/anti-authoritarian statement 1984 [ http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/george-orwells-1984-free-ebook-audio-book-study-resources.html ]. The book would come out five years later, in 1949, suggesting that Orwell worked at a pretty good clip to turn out a book of such high stature. Alas, he never lived to see it attain its current place in the culture, and barely even to see its publication. It turns out Orwell had to work faster than you may expect; beset by poor health in various manifestations, he had to finish off the novel’s manuscript, which he had then tentatively titled The Last Man in Europe, before his conditions finished him off.