In his introduction to a 2010 edition of Animal Farm (also included in the almost-posthumous collection Arguably), Christopher Hitchens makes this observation on Orwell’s cast of characters and their equivalents in the Russian revolution:
There is, however, one very salient omission. There is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig... Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time (and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face).
Well I noticed when I first read it, probably around the age of 14 or 15, at the same time I was covering the revolution in my O-level history class. And I’m sure I pointed it out at the time, although I wouldn’t be surprised if none of my peers paid any attention. And I’d be astonished if thousands of people over the years hadn’t read the book and stroked their chins and thought, “Hang on...” Of course, that’s not what Hitchens means. He means that nobody within his golden circle pointed it out, nobody with whom he was at Oxford, nobody who wrote for the New Statesman in the 70s or Vanity Fair in the 00s, nobody with whom he drank and smoke and roistered and even doistered. If I’d had a blog (OK, its analogue equivalent) back in the early 80s I might have raised the matter then, but I suspect even if I had it wouldn’t have come to his attention. Some writers, it would appear, are more equal than others.
Incidentally, if you key “animal farm” into google.co.uk the first site that comes up is an adventure park in Somerset, where you get to meet Peppa Pig. Maybe she’s Lenin.
Incidentally, if you key “animal farm” into google.co.uk the first site that comes up is an adventure park in Somerset, where you get to meet Peppa Pig. Maybe she’s Lenin.
