Animal Farm by George Orwell

Okay, so I am one of the few people in America, perhaps the world, who hasn't read this book. I think it is normal high school fair, but then I didn't go to a normal high school. At my school, if we wanted to read poetry, we read Genesis. If we wanted to read history, we read Genesis. If wanted to read about science...well you get the idea.

Orwell said that he never wrote anything good that was not about politics. He also said, "Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole." Animal Farm was written as a political indictment of the Soviet Union. In the preface to this edition, Russell Baker points out that given the political climate of the time, Orwell had trouble getting this book published. In fact, it was not published until 1945 after the end of World War II. Criticizing the Soviet Union in the early 40s was nearly heretical. After all, the Red Army had just beat back Hitler and his "invincible" army. But Orwell cautioned that the political system that was evolving in the USSR was not really socialism, but a "hierarchical society, in which the rulers would have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class."

This is precisely the type of society that Orwell depicts in Animal Farm. The animals revolt against the farmer who has oppressed them for years. They set up a farm where all animals are equal and they work for the betterment of themselves, not for the prosperity of some despotic ruler. The pigs, who are clearly the smartest animals on the farm lead the rebellion and are instrumental in setting up their utopian farm. Two pigs fall into leadership roles: Snowball and Napoleon. Eventually Napoleon runs Snowball off the farm, and it is not long before Napoleon and his cronies are running the farm in the same fashion that Farmer Jones did.

I really enjoyed this book, especially having recently read Finding George Orwell in Burma. As usual, I saved both the preface and introduction until after I had finished the book, and was a little disappointed to find out that neither of them was written by Orwell. In the preface, Russell Baker alludes on more than one occasion to a preface to Animal Farm written by George Orwell. I wonder why they didn't include that in this edition. It would no doubt have been interesting. While the preface was interesting and worth reading, I found the introduction by C. M. Woodhouse to be rather stuffy and pretentious.

Berlin, City of Stones by Jason Lutes

(Yes, Alsyon, I did read another comic book. And there's nothing you can do about it!)

It’s hard not to be moved by something written about the holocaust, or simply about war, especially something very well-written. Jason Lutes' Berlin: City of Stones, however, was something surprisingly powerful. Rather than focusing on the plight of Jewish families in war-torn Germany, Lutes writes (and draws) about the tensions between opposing factions in the years leading up to the Second World War. This is one of probably a very small selection of historical graphic novels, and I would wager that it’s easily the best.

If nothing else, Jason Lutes can certainly draw. His grasp of human anatomy and emotion isn’t the best I’ve seen, but all of his figures are stylistically pleasing, and his attention to detail in faces, dress and gestures does a lot in terms of advancing the plot without a narrator. I was impressed by his ability to draw (as far as I can tell) a completely believable 1920’s German cityscape, down to each stone in the road. His bird’s-eye-view opening or closing scenes alternatively give a strong feeling of the city’s European beauty and then of its decrepitude. I found myself lingering over panorama landscapes, picking out individual faces in Lute’s carefully drawn crowds. But it was his impressive ability to pack so much into an image without making it to busy that I found most pleasing about his style.

The story itself follows the dialogue of a few main characters, internal monologues of complete strangers, and first-person narration through journals. The beauty of Lute’s Berlin was that he didn’t have to explicitly guide the reader to conclusions about public discontent, rising discrimination against the Jews, and tensions between National Socialist and Communist worker parties that all come to the point of erupting by the end of the book. But Lutes doesn’t have to show all of this coming to a head; his reader clearly knows how the story ends. I was surprisingly moved by the personal narratives mixed into the story and was made to view the effects of such a grotesque war from a new, very human perspective. I forget which publication rated this as one of the top 10 graphic novels of all time, but I would suggest it to anyone with an interest in a wide range of subjects from the war itself to European architecture. Overall, an unexpectedly strong book, visually and in its plot; Lutes’ drawing and writing style complement each other perfectly to make a powerful end product. I found myself reading it so quickly that I was worried I wouldn’t fully appreciate it, but I couldn’t slow myself down.