First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
November 16, 2003

You probably know how the story comes out. In the end, there is no difference at all between the pigs and their original oppressors, the humans. Each of the original seven commandments is modified to meaninglessness, the final amendment producing that archetype of Orwellian irony, "All animals are equal - but some are more equal than others." The cynical old mule Benjamin, who was skeptical of the rebellion and the establishment of Animal Farm in the first place, proves the most accurate prophet. He, it is said, "professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse - hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, in his view, the unalterable law of life."

Written in the winter of 1943 - 44 in England, during some of the darkest days of the second world war, the book Animal Farm had some difficulty getting into print. No less notable a critic than the poet TS Eliot, in his capacity as an editor at the publisher Faber and Faber, wrote in his rejection letter to Orwell: "After all, your pigs are far more intellectual than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm—in fact, there couldn't have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public spirited pigs." Eliot may not have been altogether wrong - the story would be no less interesting, and perhaps even no less tragic in the end, had the more sincere leader Snowball been successful in opposing the tyrannical Napoleon - but what is remarkable is that intellectually sophisticated and literary as Eliot was, he so completely missed what I take to be the point of the book. And yet his simplistic interpretation is quite common; critics from both the political right and political left have claimed this fable as arguing the truth of their own views. Publishers in England in the mid-forties found its obvious parallels with the history of the Russian revolution to be in poor taste, since the Soviet Union was an ally against the German/Italian axis powers, and many of the British intellectual elite were attracted to the possibilities of socialism as a basis for economic and political reform. Today supporters of the cold war anti-communist position use Animal Farm to illustrate the inherent flaws of socialism, while left wing protestors see it as validating the inevitable oppressiveness of all elites and governments. In my own view, it is precisely this ambiguity that constitutes Orwell's literary achievement, for as he himself stated, he did not intend to defend any particular political system, but rather to argue for the principles of intellectual integrity and freedom - which it seems to me that he does brilliantly.

When Animal Farm was finally published, in the same month that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the war, it appeared without the lengthy preface that Orwell had composed for the first edition. Preserved by accident, that preface offers the author's version of the moral of the story, and I was delighted to come across it in the course of my preparation for this morning. While it certainly dates the work to the specific historical moment of its composition - without which, Animal Farm is as timeless a political treatise as I know - Orwell's preface explores his contention that it is the very community of literate, intelligent, and politically concerned liberals who would oppose the publication of the book. This wish, to silence rather than disprove opposing views, was dangerous he argued, regardless of which views were being silenced. The groundwork for the structures of tyranny is always at first laid trivially, implicitly, and with allegedly noble intentions. It is this irony which lies at the heart of the story, and which makes it an indictment of intellectual indolence and dishonesty rather than any particular political philosophy. Orwell writes:

"It is not so in the USA today" - ah, Mr. Orwell. Substitute 'terrorism' for 'Mr. Jones' in any one of the propaganda speeches put about by the pigs to justify their increasing usurpations, and you will have something perilously close to the present American administration's position. This is the genius of your little 'fairy story', that it holds up to scrutiny not the arguable historical realities of any nation or era, but a set of human tendencies that can be seen at work in the struggle between power and liberty in every age. In fact, Animal Farm is merely an allegorical mirror; if we recognize ourselves in its reflection, we are our own accusers - you are only telling a fable about an imaginary barnyard.

Yet it is a fable for our times, and one that we would do well to have in mind, and to heed. In her essay in Commonweal, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, Katharine Byrne poses the question, "Is Animal Farm out of date since the Soviet Socialist Republics, as constituted, have failed? Only if it is read for the wrong reasons," she answers. "The tale about independence won but lost continues to remind us that freedom is fragile and precious... The tendency of power to corrupt must always be recognized; people's hold over their own fate must prevail; an alert, informed and wary electorate."

Another critic, Robert Pearce, suggests that Orwell's development of his story was influenced by his reading of Leo Tolstoy on Russian religious, rather than political, history. What Tolstoy considered the essential precepts of the Sermon on the Mount had become almost their opposites in the mouths of Russian Orthodox clerics. The original 'Do not be angry' had become 'Do not be angry without a cause'. To say 'do not be angry without a cause', Tolstoy decided, was like urging someone to 'Love the neighbor whom thou approvest of'. He drew attention to the 1864 edition of the Catechism which, after quoting each of the Ten Commandments, then gave 'a reservation which cancelled it'. For instance, the commandment to honor one God had an addendum to the effect that we should also honor the angels and saints, 'besides, of course, the Mother of God and the three persons of the Trinity'. The second commandment, not to make idols, was perverted into an injunction to make obeisance before icons; the third, not to take oaths, became a demand to swear when called upon to do so by the legal authorities. 'Thou shalt not kill' was interpreted ingeniously; one should not kill 'except in the fulfillment of one's duties'. Similarly the instructions not to resist evil by violence, and not to judge or go to law had all been overturned, and had become their opposites, when the church had sought accommodation with the civil power. It is this same process through which Orwell's pigs reverse the meaning of the original covenant commandments agreed to by the animals in their early freedom. In this allegorical world, religious power functions no differently from civil power, and is equally at risk of corruption and exploitation.

Animal Farm has two enduring messages; one to those in positions of power, and one for ordinary citizens of any state that purports to be a democracy. Its message to average people is as a cautionary tale; this is the story of what people in power will always tend to do, and the only remedy is, as Jefferson said, eternal vigilance, both intellectual and political. There is no such thing as a loss of public rights that is either temporary or in the general interest; however benign or unimportant or needful the suspension of liberty may at first appear, it cannot be tolerated if we are to remain free. It is also crucial for ordinary people to insist upon the honest use of language and of common sense, for once the circumlocutions of privilege are accepted, the stage is set for ever larger rationalizations and lies.

The message to those in power is a warning that intellectual honesty is the first casualty of emerging tyranny. People who are educated and socially privileged and economically secure - which is at least a certain number of us here in this room - have a unique responsibility for the disciplines of freedom. Unless we are willing to become oppressors ourselves, we must be the guardians of dissent; we must protect and even encourage the presentation of information we would rather not know, of ideas we would rather not hear, of opinions that make us uncomfortable. As Orwell says in his Preface, "To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment." If the reading of Animal Farm makes you feel complacent about your views, rather than a little anxious about your own capacity for suppressing someone else, then probably the rot has already set in, and we had all better beware.

But it is as common citizens that I think we need to hear this allegory today once more across the decades; it is as heirs together of the great foundational promises of this nation, in its first moments of resolute freedom, that we ought to look into the mirror of Orwell's searching parable, and perhaps tremble at what we see. For that, my friends, is in the end the purpose of scripture and of prophesy - to make us recognize the uncomfortable truth of where we have got to, and where we are headed. As in Orwell's England, tolerance and decency are deeply rooted here in this country, along with liberty and equal justice for all, but none of these is indestructible, and all of them must be kept alive partly by conscious effort. As is true at any time or place, the result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free people know what is or is not dangerous. In the story of Animal Farm, we have been given a tuning fork by which to measure and strengthen that instinct; may we take its lessons to heart, and make the conscious effort to recognize its dangers, and to keep alive the freedom and decency of American culture, the work of our hearts and hands, of our voting and our speaking out, for all of our lives.