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George Orwell was born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, Bengal, India and died January 21, 1950, London, England. He was an English novelist, essayist, and critic famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), the latter a profound anti-utopian novel that examines the dangers of totalitarian rule. Born Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell never entirely abandoned his original name, but his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, appeared in 1933 as the work of George Orwell. The change in name corresponded to a profound shift in Orwell’s lifestyle, in which he changed from a pillar of the British imperial establishment into a literary and political rebel. After he won two scholarships and went to Eton, he decided not to go on to University, so he decided to go to Burma, as a superintendent in the Imperial Police. Here, unfortunately, he felt an outcast: he realized that the Empire was based on a false and inequitable concept, so he returned to England in 1927 and resigned from the Imperial Police. This experience gave origin to his first book, Burmese Days. It’s certainly true that the novels accurately reflect the pattern of Orwell’s life: if in the beginning, he was an “apolitical fatalist”, he then became a “socialist fatalist”, after his journalistic work to Spain, where he discovered the fragmentation of the left-wing factions. This discovery robbed him of all his illusions and drove him back to the bleak determinism of his adolescence (Animal Farm), then to escape, only to experience complete disillusion (1984), pain and the final irony of death in a London hospital (1950). Orwell was never really a political animal: his politics were the product of emotions rather than commitments and his attacks on the fascist and communist dictatorship were for emotional reasons rather than for any particular political commitment to the idea of freedom. Morally he was a socialist, but politically he was a vagabond: a loner, an egocentric living in self-isolation from his own class and yet unable to establish a dialogue or rapport with any other. His sudden change of direction brought criticism from his fellow socialists. Despite all his change of direction, he was genuinely politically prescient ad regards his anti-Stalinism, which brought him to write one of his masterpieces, Animal Farm. Animal farm, whose publication coincided with the rise of fear and hostility of the West versus Stalin, Trotsky and Russian expansionism, was defined “highly critical of many aspects of internal and external Soviet policy” and, for this reason, rejected bu his publisher, who claimed he could not publish a “general attack of this nature”. Animal Farm, though, was a huge commercial success: a political fable in the form of an allegory, it describes the revolt of the animals on a farm, who expel their cruel human master and resolve to run it themselves on Socialist principles. A wise aged boar, Old Major, is one of the animals working on Mr Jones's Manor Farm. One day he gathers all the animals of the farm in the barn to tell them of a dream he has had the night before. But, before speaking of his dream, he reminds them that all animal's lives are "miserable, laborious and short”, condemned to this life by men, their real enemy. If animals can get rid of man, they could have a better life and become a master of their own work. So he tells them his dream: a farm where the animals can live without the control of men. Three nights later Old Major dies and the socialism he had proposed is drastically altered. Three young pigs, Snowball, Napoleon and Squealer, take over the leadership; they change the name of the farm to "Animal Farm", and reduce the principles of the new philosophy to Seven Commandments. 1) Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. 2) whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. 3) No animal shall wear clothes 4)No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets 5)No animal shall drink alcohol in excess 6) No animal shall kill any other animal without a cause. 7) All animals are equal. One night all the animals of the farm join in a hard battle, defeat Mr Jones and run him off the farm. As time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball begin to struggle with each other to obtain the leadership, and Snowball is sent to exile and Napoleon takes on the leadership. All Napoleon's opponents are punished with death and the story of the animal's rebellion is re-written to make Snowball appear as a traitor and a villain.