從政治到美學：視喬治·歐威爾《動物農莊》為翻譯

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(1)國立台灣師範大學翻譯研究所 A Thesis Presented to the Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation National Taiwan Normal University. 指導教授：胡宗文 Advisor: Daniel Hu. 從政治到美學：視喬治·歐威爾《動物農莊》為翻譯 From Politics to Aesthetics: George Orwell’s Animal Farm as Translation. 研究生：羅振豪 Student: James Loo. 中華民國 108 年 1 月 January 2019.

(2) Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction. Page. 1.1 Orwell Today -------------------------------------------------------------------------. 1. 1.2 Methodology --------------------------------------------------------------------------. 7. Chapter 2: Representing Politics in a Literary Work 2.1 Why Orwell Wrote: Orwell’s Animal Farm Experiment ---------------------. 13. 2.2 Reading Animal Farm as a Work of Translation -----------------------------. 19. 2.3 Historical and Political Context to Animal Farm ------------------------------. 24. Chapter 3: Narrative of Animal Farm 3.1 Structuralist Approach to Narratology -------------------------------------------. 36. 3.2 Structuralist Approach to Narratology on a Work of Translation ----------. 46. 3.3 On Horses and a Donkey -----------------------------------------------------------. 57. Chapter 4: Conclusion ---------------------------------------------------------------------------. 69. Works Cited -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------. 73.

(3) Abstract The field of translation studies has expanded much in the last thirty years, since the late eighties when it first became recognised by the Western academic world as a legitimate discipline. In the thick of the age of interdisciplinary studies, translation has gone beyond a language-to-language duality, a phenomenon most notably traced back to what is considered the cultural turn in Translation Studies, opening up to fields that have once regarded translation as nothing more than a secondary activity. This dissertation is onboard with such a progress, as it examines George Orwell’s Animal Farm as an act of translation, culminating in a narrative both as a text and as an agenda. By adopting a structuralist approach to narratology as a means of appraising the text, and then subsequently applying the arguments of Andre Lefevere’s concept of rewriting as delineated in his seminal text, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, this dissertation looks at how Animal Farm is Orwell’s translation of his politics into his aesthetics. Keywords: Orwell, Animal Farm, narratology, Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame,.

(4) Loo 1. Chapter 1: Introduction Translation can be a metaphor for metaphor; conversely, metaphor a metaphor for translation. – Rainier Guldin, Translation as Metaphor 1.1 Orwell Today Eric Arthur Blair, more famously known as George Orwell, was a British writer born in June 1903, and was most active as a writer from 1930 until the late 1940s. Though Orwell lived a relatively short life, dying at the young age of fourty-six from complications as a result of tuberculosis, he was a prolific writer who penned many nonfiction essays on a wide range of topics. These included social and political commentaries, book reviews, news reports, journal articles, and most importantly in the context of this dissertation, essays whereby Orwell became a self-critic of sorts, expounding on his own works, both fictional and non-fictional. On top of his non-fiction works, Orwell also wrote a total of six novels, and is perhaps most well-known today as an author for his fictional works. Most notably, Orwell’s last novel – and in fact, his last major work before he passed away – Nineteen Eighty-Four was such a prominent work that much of the words, phrases, and even concepts presented in the novel has worked its way into modern English lexicon. Such examples include words like “thoughtcrime”, concepts like the “Ministry of Truth”, and the oppressively panoptic phrase “Big Brother is watching you”, all of which are still referenced today nearly seventy years after Orwell penned them in his novel. Perhaps the most iconic example of how Orwell remains relatable even till today is in the form of an internet meme. A comic depicting Orwell and another author, Aldous Huxley, who was at a point in time Orwell’s teacher, was posted on the popular Internet.

(5) Loo 2. meme website 9gag, an online platform where individual user-created content can be posted by anyone with an account. Given the ease with which a user could post his/her own created content online, the wealth of content on 9gag is so deep that for any singular post to stand out among the sea of other postings, it must achieve a certain level of resonance with a global audience. And resonate with Internet users the world over the Orwell vs. Huxley comic did, as it was widely shared on other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as being reinterpreted in the form of a video and uploaded to YouTube. Picking up on its popularity as an Internet meme, established newspapers and magazines like the New York Times (McGrath, “Which”) and the National Review (Smith, “Live”) carried articles commenting on the comparison made between Orwell and Huxley. This viral comic, first posted on 9gag in August 2012, was a reference to Neil Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, and essentially made the case that the climate of oppression described in the two dystopian narratives was rapidly becoming more fact than fiction in the modern age, and made a distinction as to the kinds of dystopia described in the books of the pair who were once teacher and student (A. Postman, vii). Such comparisons invariably prove the relevance of Orwell even till today, almost sixty-eight years since the English author died. Orwell himself has become an icon, frequently quoted or referenced when politics is brought up; particularly those of the oppressive, totalitarian regime slant. As recently as May 2018, the White House issued a statement lambasting the “Chinese Civil Aviation Administration’s [demand] that carriers change how “Taiwan,” “Hong Kong,” and “Macao” are identified on their websites and in their promotional material so that.

(6) Loo 3. the references fall in line with the Communist Party’s standards” as “Orwellian nonsense” (“Statement from the Press Secretary on China’s Political Correctness”). It is certain that Orwell’s prominence in the English-speaking world in the present age is very much a testament to the influence his literary works have on his readers, both of his milieu and beyond. Thus, given Orwell’s relevance, there is value in looking at his works and attempt to uncover perspectives that may have previously been overlooked in the appraisal of his work. The fact that Orwell remains relevant even today is all the more fascinating when one considers how the author was very much motivated to write as a form of reaction to events of his time. Orwell was not an author who created literature as a means of self-gratification, or as an exercise in aesthetics – as critics John Rossi and John Rodden opined in The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell, Orwell “was primarily a political writer” (1). As such, his writings were inextricably tied to the politics of his time. Yet precisely because of Orwell’s classification as a political writer, past critics have leaned towards examining Orwell’s works from a political perspective, neglecting to consider the literary aesthetics of Orwell’s writings. In light of this, an appraisal of Orwell’s works now would hopefully be free of any political biases that might have been prevalent for critics who were contemporaries of Orwell. In critiquing Orwell’s works, given that the author’s writings were unabashedly and often directly linked to the politics that was current then, past commentators had been quick to appraise his work as a response to the political climate then. That is to say, even Orwell’s fictional works.

(7) Loo 4. were seen as serving to advance a political agenda by most critics, almost from the get-go. While it would be nigh impossible to argue that Orwell did not intended his writings to serve a political purpose (a fact that is often times confirmed by the author himself, especially when he acts as a self-critic), this tendency to see his work as such often meant sacrificing a consideration of the aesthetic aspects of Orwell’s writings. This is true when critics comment on Orwell’s Animal Farm, as the novella was often seen as a critique of Soviet Union under Stalin, even though not one word in the entire work referred to the Communist state or its leader directly. Animal Farm was an allegorical work depicting how animals on the fictional Manor Farm were inspired to stage a revolution against their human masters, by a boar named Old Major who felt it was his “duty to pass on to [the rest of the animals on the farm] such wisdom as I have acquired” before he died (Orwell, Farm 2). The animals, led by two pigs named Snowball and Napoleon who were the wisest among all pigs on the farm, were guided by the teachings of the Seven Commandments of Animalism; of which the last commandment, that “[a]ll animals are equal” bore the most significance (Orwell, Farm 8). The animals renamed Manor Farm as Animal Farm after a successful revolution, in which Snowball was valourised for being a key force behind the revolution. Subsequently, Napoleon, jealous of Snowball’s popularity, drove his fellow pig off the farm by the use of force, ordering his own army of dogs which he had taken under his wing since they were puppies to attack Snowball. With the only threat to his dominance gone, Napoleon became the de facto leader of Animal Farm, and together with the rest of the pigs, who were the ‘ruling class’ owing to their superior intelligence, ruled over the.

(8) Loo 5. other animals in a manner akin to their previous human masters. The novella ends with a poignant scene whereby Orwell depicts the rest of the animals “[looking] from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” (Farm 42). For a reader in the 1940s when Animal Farm was written and later published, the reference to the genesis of the Soviet Union even from just the short summary of the novella above would have been unmistakable, let alone a reading of the narrative as a whole. It is unsurprising then how easy one would point towards the narrative as simply being a bashing of Stalin’s rise to power in the Soviet Union, by blackmailing and forcing out his political rivals, most notably Leon Trotsky. The characters of Snowball and Napoleon were reflections of Trotsky and Stalin, and this was a fact not missed by the British publishers then, who refused to publish the novella in 1944. Orwell himself noted that he sent the novella for publishing to four publishers then, and one of them wrote back refusing to publish it for the following reason: I can see now that it might be regarded as something which [would be] highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. (“Freedom” 1, italics added for emphasis).

(9) Loo 6. Clearly, Animal Farm was not seen then as purely a work of literature, but rather as a piece of politically-charged propaganda which was not aligned with the popular mind at the time, so much so that as the aforementioned publisher commented, it would have made it to print if it was less obvious in its reference to the Soviets. Essentially, the problem with Animal Farm, as far as British publishers then were concerned, was not that it was expressing a political opinion that was not widely regarded during its time – its problem was that it was too obvious in pointing its literary finger at a specific group, which is an interesting distinction. This signalled that the novella was being judged for a political effect as a result of an aesthetic/literary aspect which amplified the political agenda so illuminatingly, it became obvious even to a reader of a fictional work that he/she was not simply reading a work of literature. This notion is augmented by the same publisher’s opinion that “the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people…particularly to…the Russians” (Orwell, “Freedom” 1). Perhaps unintentionally, the publisher was conflating Orwell’s politics and his aesthetics in that comment – the plot of Animal Farm would not have changed if the novella’s ruling caste was changed from pigs to another animal, but it was an aesthetic choice significant enough for the publisher to note that the novella was overly offensive in its original form. It was evident then how difficult it was to see Animal Farm as a literary work in its own right without being clouded in judgment by the political overtures that were so prominent during Orwell’s time. This dissertation will break free from this ideological trapping, yet do so in a manner that does not disregard it – for to.

(10) Loo 7. ignore the political aspects of Animal Farm would have been as incomplete a reading of the narrative as too much of a focus on it had been. 1.2 Methodology How then to tackle a critique of Animal Farm which would ideally take into consideration both its political and aesthetic aspects? This dissertation argues the approach to critique Animal Farm as a work of translation, as the grounds whereby a translation from Orwell’s politics into Orwell’s aesthetics takes place. In this sense, politics is the ‘source text’, while aesthetics is the ‘target text’. The rationale behind such an ordering is supplied by the author himself, who asserted that “[w]hat I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years [leading up to writing Animal Farm] is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice” (Orwell, “Write” 5). In translation studies, both the source text and the target text are considered as two texts with a shared relationship – no critique of a translated text can be undertaken without a reference to its source text. This is most obvious for prescriptive translation studies, whereby the target text is measured against the source text as a means of gauging whether the translation was ‘good’ or ‘bad’, while in descriptive translation studies the focus is more on how the source text influences the rendering of the target text. This approach of looking at how source text has an impact on the target text will inform this dissertation’s critique of Animal Farm. A testament to Orwell’s appeal as an author is derived from the many languages his writings have been translated into from its original English text. Translation studies critics have often looked at the numerous ways Orwell has been translated, with fruitful results that has contributed much to the advance of the field. Yet to see Orwell’s writing.

(11) Loo 8. as a translational act, and to see his original work as a translation is an approach that has hitherto not been adopted. This approach will straddle both the field of translation studies and the field of literary studies, in that it applies the theories and arguments pushed for by translation studies critics onto a literary text which is not a translation in the traditional sense – that is, a work of literature that has a source text in another language. Given Orwell’s penchant to be intransigent, it is unsurprising that much has been written about the author, to the extent that it would be an impossible task to attempt to cover more than a fraction of the wealth of literature that expounds on Orwell. In the context of this dissertation then, an understanding of Orwell’s background both historically and politically is necessary. For a writer like Orwell, who as aforesaid draws motivation to create literature as a form of reaction to real-life events, an understanding of these events would be helpful in painting a picture of the author’s motive. Stephen Ingles’ The Social and Political Thought of George Orwell: A Reassessment is a useful text in this regard, owing to the fact that it manages to take a look at Orwell from a modern perspective. That is to say, it attempts to look at Orwell’s political inclinations and societal perspective without the biases of past biographers, whom Ingles argues had essentially failed to look at the English author without considering his aesthetics, by not considering “Orwell as an imaginative writer” (13). This is in line with this dissertation’s point of view, for Orwell’s ingenuity as a writer should not be viewed as simply a case of ‘writing for a pliant audience’ so to speak. While there is no doubt that the shift in the popular mind post-WWII/ Cold War world vis-à-vis the attitude towards totalitarianism in general and the Soviet Union specifically contributed greatly to the.

(12) Loo 9. reception of Orwell’s narratives, which speak out against the aforementioned ideology and its most prominent sovereign example, this does not satisfactorily explain why Orwell remains relevant today, in an age that has moved far beyond the Cold War era. In appraising a work of literature, there are several approaches one can adopt critically to understand the text in depth. Even without explicitly stating the approach, or even being conscious about one’s own approach in the first place, a reader necessarily perceives a text in a certain manner because of his/her own natural tendencies and inclinations – in short, no reader is neutral in his/her reading. That is not to say subjectivity is necessarily a negative, but literary critics as a whole have generally moved towards being conscious of their own biases and approaches in order to provide a reading that is tenable beyond the arbitrariness of personal preferences, in hopes that such a level of self-awareness would result in a more well-rounded critical debate, avoiding an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison of differing readings in the process. In line with such a positive step in academia, this dissertation would be forthright in its use of a structuralist approach to narratology, as it is expounded in Monkia Fludernik’s An Introduction to Narratology. While Fludernik’s text does not look to any of Orwell’s work specifically in citing examples for its theoretical exegesis, there is merit in adopting such a critical approach in looking at Orwell’s Animal Farm. As is hardly unorthodox considering Orwell’s overt socialist leanings, a Marxist reading of the author’s works – naturally including Animal Farm as well – is the most commonly adopted approach by critics of Orwell, given that so much of the narrative corresponds neatly with Marxist arguments. That being the case, with so much ink already spilled on a Marxist critical approach of Orwell’s work, it.

(13) Loo 10. would be unproductive to follow suit. Moreover, a Marxist reading would direct focus on certain aspects while glossing over others, as is the case with other critical approaches that start from a theoretical basis. Fludernik’s explanation of a structuralist approach to narratology posits to view a narrative as encompassing several levels that work in tandem to form one whole, and to approach said narrative from the different textual levels (plot, diction, genre etc.) with the express aim of perceiving how each level operates in a manner that adds up to make the narrative more than the sum of all its parts. The advantage here with regard to appraising Orwell’s Animal Farm is that sans an external theoretical basis acting as a ‘guide’ of sorts in looking at the narrative, more focus could be given to the text itself. On top of that, Fludernik’s textbook-style explication provides an easy and accessible method, which could be effectively applied to any narrative. The decision to break down Animal Farm first using a structuralist approach to narratology, instead of directly applying an approach posited by a translation studies critic, is due to the fact that there is no language-to-language comparison that could be applied onto a critique of Animal Farm in the context of this dissertation. Whereas the translation studies critic could look at source text/target text against the backdrop of two languages, cultures, and the relationship between author/translator, then narrowing down to the very lexical differences between the diction used in both texts and so forth, the examination of Orwell’s Animal Farm in this paper does not share the same circumstances. Hence, to break down Orwell’s politics and Orwell’s aesthetics for the purpose of seeing how both mesh and form one narrative, a structuralist approach to.

(14) Loo 11. narratology will be the initial step undertaken to inform the critical approach of this dissertation. With the background knowledge pertaining to the author and the approach to critiquing his work dealt with, the final pillar of this dissertation lies in the perspective that Orwell’s Animal Farm is essentially a translation from Orwell’s politics into his aesthetics, culminating in a narrative that encompasses both fields, much like how a work of translation stands alone as a narrative in its target language/culture in its own right, and yet also necessarily embodies the original text along with all its accompanying influences. André Lefevere’s Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame argues that the titular three aspects are one and the same; that translation is a form of rewriting, and that rewriting is a form of manipulation. The premise behind such an argument is that all rewritings have a political purpose; Lefevere’s definition of political purpose conforms with Orwell’s in that both view politics in “the widest possible sense”, not just specifically to advance an ideology in particular, but also in advancing any thought, position, or poetics as the rewriter deems fit (“Write” 3). Lefevere’s work supplies a reason to the grand question of why translations specifically – but also, as this dissertation argues, writing in general – are undertaken in a certain manner. Disregarding a level of difference with regard to the skill of a translator, the different strategies that each translator adopts, Lefevere argues, could be traced back to a certain political goal that he/she wishes to attain. Instead of arbitrarily critiquing a translator for being ‘bad’ in his/her rendition of an original text because we disagree with the translator’s methods, approach, and/or strategy in translating, Lefevere sought to view each act of rewriting as being motivated by a purpose which.

(15) Loo 12. guides the translational act, whether the translator is aware of its influence or not. In the same vein, this dissertation will read Orwell’s Animal Farm as a ‘rewriting’ of sorts as informed by the arguments made by Lefevere, which are applied onto Orwell’s narrative for the purpose of perceiving Animal Farm as a work of translation..

(16) Loo 13. Chapter 2: Representing Politics in a Literary Work When we seek an explanation of translation, we too often and too facilely speak of translation as if its central aim consisted in the transfer of a text written in one language to a text written in another language…It is difficult to draw narrow conceptual limits around the word ‘translation’, which is almost always used metaphorically – Naoki Sakai, Translation as Metaphor 2.1 Why Orwell Wrote: Orwell’s Animal Farm Experiment George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a text that comes to mind for many readers when considering the genre of political satire. For all the success and significance that Nineteen Eighty-Four has left in the minds of readers nearly seventy years since its publication, it cannot be forgotten that it was Animal Farm that gave Orwell his first taste of notoriety as a renowned writer (as opposed to simply being a political commentator), and his first step towards becoming a celebrated author who wrote fiction that was heavily involved with politics. For Orwell, Animal Farm was an experiment for the neophyte novelist, which we now know in hindsight is a highly successful one given how it “was translated into more than sixty languages…selling more than forty million copies” (Ingles 2). Since his days as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, Orwell had been very much concerned with politics and its impact in everyday life, and resorting to writing as a way to address these concerns was his catharsis. But Orwell’s writings prior to Animal Farm had mostly been presented in a literary fashion that was not widely accepted by mass readership. On the subject of another of his books, Homage to Catalonia, which Orwell admitted was “of course a frankly political book”, the.

(17) Loo 14. author recalled how a critic “whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism” (“Write” 5). Animal Farm thus represented an attempt by the author to break free of this writing style of including copious amount of dry political commentary in his previous books like Homage to Catalonia, which Orwell himself felt “[c]learly such a chapter…would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, [and must have ruined] the book” (“Write” 5). This is stark proof of Orwell’s sensitivity towards literary forms, and how he was not unaware of the fact that despite being able to attain a cathartic release of sorts for himself from the ‘journalistic’ style of writing that prior to Animal Farm he had been so privy to, it simply was not as appealing to the average reader. Moreover, this penchant to connect with mass readership is reflective of Orwell’s desire to connect not with the intellectuals and the academics which were an exclusive sector of readership considered the upper echelon of society, but rather it was with the ‘everyman’, or what he terms the “ordinary reader”, the middle-class who had the ability to read but had little to no interest in the political shenanigans that seemed to be an exclusive realm for the rich and influential (“Write” 5). Orwell saw himself as undertaking the onus of being a bridge between the two groups; of informing the general public on the impact of the politics they shun by virtue of the fact that, at least to their senses, they had no power over. True to his socialist roots in this regard, Orwell was insistent on writing literature that could overturn this notion that politics was a game played by the upper classes, and that those who fall beneath the upper tiers of society had no choice but to accept the.

(18) Loo 15. outcome. To inform and delineate the impact which politics had on the everyday life of all classes – not simply just being of relevance to high society – was to Orwell the first step in effecting a change. Once there was a understanding that politics matters to everyone, and that society at large should be concerned with the path that the politics of their time would lead them to, the next step was to infuse in society the idea that the masses had the power to grip control over how politics is shaped – that they should not have to bow to the games played by those economically and socially superior to them, because it is the middle-class majority that embody within them the power of change, in line with the Marxist concept of a revolution that would be brought about by the working class. Little wonder then that Orwell concluded Why I Write in such a manner: I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally. (“Write” 6) Literature was the medium by which Orwell decided, roughly at the time of his writing of Animal Farm, that he could serve to influence society; literature and not journalism, but also literature without flourish for flourish’s sake. In short, literature with a moral purpose. Animal Farm clearly held a place of special significance for Orwell, who considered the novella as “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” (“Write” 5, italics added for emphasis). The aforesaid quote, and in fact the entire essay of “Why I.

(19) Loo 16. Write” penned by Orwell, is especially intriguing considering that it revealed in a refreshingly direct fashion one of the core tenets informing Orwell’s purpose in producing works of literature – to attain the perfect amalgamation of artistic and political belief. In the essay, Orwell lists his “four great motives for writing” as follows: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose (“Write” 2/3). On the last category, as stated earlier, Orwell defines politics “in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after”, and he makes no attempt to hide the importance he places on the last motive, as he alluded to when he concluded by stating that he “cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed” (“Write” 3/6). His authorial intent is made clear from this essay. Orwell takes it a step further in arguing that all writing is in fact political in nature, as even the “opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude” (“Write” 3). It is illumination such as these which led critics to argue that “what profoundly interested Orwell were political questions” (Rhodden and Rossi 1), yet because of the intensity to which such a nature is underscored by the author himself, many a critic has neglected to take into account the necessity to “[consider] Orwell as an imaginative writer”: That is to say, [a critic] does not concern himself with the crucial fact that Orwell’s primary motivation was to write, and where literary integrity came into conflict with political commitment, Orwell’s primary allegiance was to the former. A study that fails to recognise this fact is bound to be correspondingly deficient… (Ingles 13).

(20) Loo 17. As the essay “Why I Write” depicted, such an argument made by Ingles that literary integrity would rank over political commitment for Orwell culminated in the novella that is Animal Farm. Orwell was meticulous in choosing to voice out his politics via a literary form that was a deviation from his previous style precisely because he, at that point in time, had come to a realisation that it was in literature that he could truly reach out to as many ears as possible. If his political beliefs were what Orwell wanted to share with the world, writing was how he wanted to share it. Though literary aesthetics and politics are decidedly distinct spheres, Orwell sought to blend the two driving forces, fuelled by his desire to write to arrive at a synthesis amounting to one balanced entity. It is imperative that we note that for Orwell, one was not valued more than the other; that is to say, this was not a case of political propaganda masquerading as a work of literature, nor was it a case of a work of literature adopting an ideological slant in a bid to be seen in the limelight by producing a work that would have appealed to a specific group of politically like-minded readers. Ingles’ aforesaid argument has to be read in context; certainly, when it came to the creation of literature vis-à-vis the actual act of writing, Orwell will not sacrifice the aesthetics of his literary form at the altar of his political beliefs, instead valuing what Ingles termed Orwell’s literary integrity (Ingles 13). But there is no doubt that both were equally important to the author; while literary integrity was prioritised over political commitment with regard to the style of presentation, it is a case of ‘first among equals’ rather than of one being valued over the other. As Orwell himself explained: When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to.

(21) Loo 18. expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention… [b]ut I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. (“Write” 5) Again, what Orwell truly wanted was a mesh of the two, and Animal Farm was him taking a crack at achieving this undoubtedly tall task. Evidently then that Orwell himself acutely recognised that both his literary aesthetics and his politics were strong, motivational forces that work hand-inhand in order to spur his writing. Writing had to be an aesthetic experience for the author, even if there was a more practical reason for Orwell to pick up the pen. One could rightfully say that politics was the spark when examining Orwell’s drive to create literature, for as Orwell himself stated he never saw his desire to write as a desire to produce a work of art. Yet though one precedes the other, both the process and the end product is fuelled by the twin forces of politics and aesthetics. This duality of Orwell’s politics and Orwell’s aesthetics became one and the same vis-à-vis Animal Farm; as Orwell himself commented, he desired to render his real-life experiences of politics into the written form, which for him was an “aesthetic experience”, driven by a political motivation which was the spark that ignited the intent to write for Orwell in the first place (“Write” 5). This salient point which reflects Orwell’s authorial intention deserves emphasis, for it is a key element contributing to Orwell’s genius as an author – the unpretentious honesty in pursuing his political intentions, yet done in a manner that aspires not to sacrifice the aesthetic aspect in the pursuit of said political intentions. Orwell.

(22) Loo 19. opined that for him, writing in the style of what he called “purple passages” was where he invariably failed as a writer, yet as aforementioned, building on the experience of his previous works, he was also acutely aware of how he had sacrificed aesthetics in an attempt to inform readers politically, ultimately leading to lukewarm reception (“Write” 2/6). 2.2 Reading Animal Farm as a Work of Translation In exploring Orwell’s authorial intent, this dissertation has thus far set forth the two different spheres of influence which culminates in Animal Farm: politics and aesthetics. In his attempt to blend the two together in one text, an argument would be made that Orwell’s literary methods can be appraised through the lens of theories of translation, in light of the fact that Orwell was essentially translating his politics into his aesthetics by seeking to achieve a fine balance of a literary work motivated by political inclinations that will nonetheless be able to stand on its own foot as a true work of literature. To be more specific, approaches that view the act of translation as a metaphorical process, and do not relegate translation to a simple act of a linguistic transfer of meaning across two languages, will apply to the perspective of Animal Farm as a translation. Such theories do not fall solely in the camp of either prescriptive or descriptive translation theories, as critics from both sides have provided arguments which allows for an interpretation of writing as translation. Critics such as the linguistic-based translation theorist Peter Newmark, arguably more entrenched in the ‘prescriptive camp’ than the ‘descriptive camp’, opined that “[g]ood writing, which encompasses the aesthetic.

(23) Loo 20. truth of a translation, is an essential component of a comprehensive translation theory, if only because it indicates the one creative way to compensate for the many lexical gaps and deficiencies which exist in all languages” (1). Newmark’s point might have been more about the need to emphasize the linguistic quality of a translated text in prescriptive translation theories, but at the same time, this underscores the fact that the act of writing is inherent in the act of translation – a logical conclusion considering that both are fundamentally linguistic acts. On the other side in the ‘descriptive camp’, critics such as Susan Bassnett and Lefevere, both of whom were credited with promulgating the cultural turn in translation, expounded on viewing translation (both as an act and as a product) through theories and critical lenses outside of linguistic theories (Constructing Cultures, Bassnett and Lefevere 2). On the subject of translation, the critic Vincente Rafael argues that “translation…involves not simply the ability to speak in a language other than one’s own but the capacity to reshape one’s thoughts and actions in accordance with accepted forms” and that this was a process undertaken when there is a need to “either [affirm] or [evade] the social order” (149, italics added for emphasis). This was a sentiment commensurable with Orwell’s own approach to creating literature: he had to attain an ability (“the capacity”) to be able to mold his politics (“reshape one’s thoughts and actions”) into a literary form that was more attuned to reach mass readership (“accepted forms”) at a time when the general consensus in publishing circles was not to produce works that were in line with Orwell’s political leanings (“evasion of the social order”) (Rafael 149). It.

(24) Loo 21. is as though Rafael was speaking in tandem with Orwell, though in truth the connection is anachronistic, given that the critic was basing his statements on a post-colonial examination of Tagalog translations by the Spanish Christians during the time of the Spanish East Indies. When taken as a metaphor, the act of translation becomes more than a language-to-language transfer, instead encompassing a ‘meaning-to-meaning’ transfer, a notion which is not as apparent given an understanding of translation as necessarily an act that takes place across languages; it will be thoroughly pointless if a text was translated from one language to another semantically, if the value of meaning that comes inherently bound to a text is lost in the act of translation. To illustrate, a common anecdote in translation circles is the conundrum that befell biblical translators in their attempt to render the phrase “as white as snow”, into a language whereby the concept of snow is lost due to the fact that meteorologically, snow is non-existent in said culture. A simplistic solution would have been to replace snow with another object of whiteness, but the very reasons why the biblical translators then were in a dilemma are the same reasons why translation is not simply a linguistic act: replacing snow with another object of whiteness would mean sacrificing the notion of purity. The word “snow” carried several levels of signification, including signifying complete purity, a sense of the power of creation, and last but not least the aesthetic image of gently falling snow itself. Translation simply goes beyond language itself. When considering Animal Farm as a work of translation, the symbiosis between Orwell’s politics and his aesthetics is viewed as the relationship shared.

(25) Loo 22. between a source text and its target (translated) text. If Animal Farm is taken to be representative of the symbiosis of Orwell’s politics and Orwell’s aesthetics, then the process of fusing his political purpose with his literary aesthetics into one is akin to the act of translation (“Write” 5). In seeking to fulfil his political purpose, Orwell turned towards literature as a means of carrying out this purpose – translation essentially serves this same function of a transfer of meaning, as can be derived from the etymology of the word itself. Orwell’s translational act was to represent his politics through his aesthetics, by creation of a text that balanced, or at the very least attempted to balance, the two. Once again, neither was valued over the other in the authorial process. This notion of Orwell’s writing as a translation of his politics into his aesthetics is further augmented by the literary device that the author employed in the creation of Animal Farm – an allegory, as defined by the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, is “a story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation”. There cannot be a more accurate and succinct summary of what Animal Farm fundamentally is. The characters of Snowball and Napoleon, lead protagonist and antagonist respectively, represented leaders of different convictions, while the remaining characters of Manor Farm represented the average citizen, each with their varying levels of political awareness and political leanings. An allegory is at its core an extended metaphor – extended in the sense that the metaphor persists throughout the narrative that is Animal Farm, in contrast with that of a vanilla metaphor, which is applicable only to a singular instance. The metaphorical.

(26) Loo 23. nature of the novella delineated for the readers that Animal Farm was symbolic of things outside of the text, and its constant echoing of real-world politics – a deliberate narrative technique employed and thoroughly intended by Orwell – was a fundamental element of the novella that cannot, and should not, be ignored. It is no coincidence that Orwell employed the use of metaphors heavily in Animal Farm. Just as it is in the case of translating between two languages, the sheer difference between the fields of politics and aesthetics meant that a blending of the two cannot be presented in a straightforward and direct manner, if the desired outcome is to culminate in a form that could be accepted and understood by a reader, who would not have been privy to the idiosyncratic links that are formed in the mind of an author. This same problem applies to the field of translation as well. A monolingual reader would not be able to comprehend the nuances of another language, therefore a bilingual translator worth his/her salt will not only have to possess a keen awareness for these nuances, he/she will also have to possess the writing (translating) acumen to be able to carry over these foreign language nuances and present them in a form that is not jarring to the monolingual reader. Writing metaphorically, in the form of an allegory, was arguably the only way Orwell could have fused his politics and literary aesthetics together without tipping the scales too much in favour of one over the other, which as previously stated, was an undertaking that was of great importance to the author. Too direct, and Animal Farm would have become a political treatise; too vague, and.

(27) Loo 24. Animal Farm would have lost that ever present echo of realism, and be reduced generically to a text closer to magical realism than a political satire. 2.3 Historical & Political Context to Animal Farm Every story you try to tell, where you decide the starting point is, is a matter of how you see things; it’s not empirical reality, as it were. – Mona Baker, Interview with Mona Baker What follows is a short exposition of the historical context that set into motion the writing of Animal Farm. Understanding the history behind the circumstances that led to the novella is helpful for two reasons. Firstly, it checks off two of the boxes that Orwell himself stipulated as the factors that led writers to write: historical impulse and political purpose (“Write” 3). That the two fields are intertwined is unsurprising, perhaps even expected for an author like Orwell, who is motivated by real-life events in creating literature. Yet this does not take away the salutary effect of looking at the historical backstory to the novella in an appraisal of both the author and the work. Orwell himself noted that “in a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties” (“Write” 3). In that statement, Orwell delineated the significance of history on his writing (“in a peaceful age”), which was to an extent that it not only stimulated the motivation to write, but also dictated the form and nature of the writing itself (“might have written ornate or merely descriptive books”) (“Write” 3). As history would have it, we never got to witness how a descriptive Orwell would have read like, though it likely would not have been a major.

(28) Loo 25. loss, given the author’s plausibly self-deprecatory assessment of his attempt at a short story as being “a ghastly failure” (“Write” 1). The second reason why it would prove useful to examine the history behind Animal Farm would be to underscore the specific set(s) of historical events which contributed significantly to the creation of the narrative that is Animal Farm. The Orwell biographer Ingles opined that the first set of historical events which “[composed the allegory that is the] story of Animal Farm is, in short…the Russian Revolution and postRevolution” (82). These were the events which were reflected in the form of an allegory in the novella, and is an ever present echo in the reading of the fictional events of Animal Farm. It is to be noted though that Orwell took liberties with historical fact in his writing of Animal Farm; the events of the Russian Revolution were not presented chronologically in its allegorical reflection that is Animal Farm. The second set of historical events refers to the Second World War, and the series of events which erupted as a result of WWII, leading all the way past Orwell’s death into the Cold War. Without the occurrence of such historical incidents, Animal Farm would never have seen the light of day. Sans the events of WWII and the Grand Alliance which was formed as a result of it, Orwell would have lacked an impetus to write. Likewise, without the chain of events that is the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s eventual rise to power, Orwell would have no material to allegorise in his satire. More significantly, even after the novella was written, it will never have reached a level of influence it enjoys today if not for the impact that the Cold War had on the sensibility of readers of that time. Orwell ruminated over a description of his growth as an author in his essay “Why I Write”, and it would be apparent to readers of the essay that the young Orwell was an.

(29) Loo 26. experimental writer spreading his literary wings, with the form and nature of his works seemingly dictated by the present great author that Orwell was enamored with at each stage of his life, from Blake to Aristophanes, to H.G. Wells, who Orwell considered “the hero of his youth” (Ingles 1). Crucially, this mimicking/homage style of writing was intertwined with “the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind” (“Write” 2). Orwell was essentially on a journey of selfidentification both as a writer and as a person, and the historical happenings of the world as he was undergoing this journey became an outer narrative, an influence that was just as impactful as the stories and works of other authors he admired throughout his life. Even at this pre-writing stage, the commensurability of the concept of translation vis-à-vis the act of writing for Orwell could be derived easily: just like a translator who constantly refers back to his/her source text as the muse for his/her literary creation (the target text), Orwell constantly looked to at least two sets of narrative as his literary muse(s), namely the works of authors he admired, as well as the historical experiences he was living through. That Orwell chose to speak of his growth as a writer by explicating on his childhood years in “Why I Write” (which was published in 1946, a year after Animal Farm’s publication), even singling out Animal Farm as the first book he attempted to write “with some clarity [as to] what kind of book I want to write” makes it clear that Orwell should not be read solely as a political writer (“Write” 5). He injects his own individual personality into his writing, as evident from his notion of a “self-story” that occupied his literary mind during his youth (“Write” 2). This points back again to the shared basis of a relationship between individual against society, and a relationship.

(30) Loo 27. between source text and target text. Individuality as a construct is informed by the larger society, yet it is not wholly a product of society. A target text is a narrative work in its own right, yet it cannot be free of the influences of the source text. Each shapes the other. Animal Farm was first published in 1945, but Orwell penned the novella in late 1943. The chronological difference is noteworthy, because by 1945, the Grand Alliance – the wartime alliance between the Soviet Union, the United States, as well as the United Kingdom – was on its last throes, with the Second World War coming to an end. Yet in 1943, the military alliance was at its peak, with the common enemy being Nazi Germany, and the sense of comradeship was especially pronounced between the Soviets and the United Kingdom. The latter was the originator of the alliance; following the fall of France in June 1940, British policymakers reached a consensus that “the resources of the United States had to be sought”, whilst the former was fighting its own war against Nazi Germany prior to the alliance (Rise xi). Keeping in mind that the attack on Pearl Harbor was not until 1941, the genesis of the alliance was arguably much more desired by the UK and the Soviet Union, whilst America took a backseat as war had not reached their shores as yet. It was in this climate of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ that the alliance was formed – perhaps no other set of circumstances would have resulted in such cooperation between the greatest capitalist state, the greatest communist state, and the greatest colonial power (Ambrose and Brinkley 15). Understandably then, that with a common enemy significant enough to warrant overlooking (at least temporarily) the overt differences in the way that each member of the alliance governed its own.

(31) Loo 28. sovereign state, there was a certain degree of pandering amongst the three nations. Each country (notably the UK and the Soviets, as aforesaid) realised the need they had of each other, and each was careful to maintain a level of cooperation and acceptance of the other which would allow the alliance to proceed as was needed. Curiously, this notion of not being critical of the other nations belonging to the Grand Alliance extended beyond the governmental agencies, as Orwell himself noted that around the end of 1943, when Orwell sought to publish Animal Farm, “what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia… Any serious criticism of the Soviet regime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable” (“Freedom” 2). Taken prima facie, one would have assumed that this was largely due to governmental pressure. Yet this penchant to censor was an affront to Orwell principally because as Orwell argued, “…it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban…not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact” (“Freedom” 2). This phenomenon then, was the impetus which spurred Orwell to create a work like Animal Farm, as the author opined that “the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group” (“Freedom” 2-3, italics added for emphasis). This ‘spontaneity’ was by all accounts regarded by Orwell as a serious affliction, because it suggested that British intelligentsia at that time was being woefully ignorant of Soviet Russia, adopting a pack mentality of not publishing works which reflected.

(32) Loo 29. opinions that ran counter to what was ‘popular’ opinion at that time; quite simply, this was unintelligent behaviour by the British intellectuals from Orwell’s perspective. On this point, historians diverge on whether this ignorance was an intentional diplomatic move, given the circumstances of the alliance, or if it was simply a case of a lack of an interest in the eyes of British intellectuals then to closely examine an ally – put bluntly, there were more pressing issues that deserved attention. Yet effectively, whether the ignorance was deliberate or otherwise was beside the point for Orwell; that it existed, regardless of the background to its genesis, was a serious thorn in Orwell’s flesh. His abhorrence for such a blinded perspective vis-à-vis the British intellectuals could be traced back to his own experiences with the Empire; Orwell opined that “the English…feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’”: Nor is this because they are ‘practical’, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply…to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy – their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance – is bound up with this. (“England” 2, italics added for emphasis) One could certainly make the argument that Orwell’s deep-rooted distaste for what he considers the vices of the English, specifically the vices of the well-educated, may be traced back to his run-ins with British imperialism. What was even more irksome was how this self-censorship was extended only to the Soviets; Orwell noted ironically that “hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals” (“Freedom” 2)..

(33) Loo 30. The British intelligentsia during Orwell’s time was quite comfortable with critiquing their own government and leader, and for a country and a people who were, at that point in history, right atop the throne as a ‘superpower’ nation – to use a contemporary and anachronistic term – there was no issue of censorship being attributed to strong-handed governmental intervention, nor any perceived form of subservience to a higher authority. As Ian Hall observed, “reserves of sympathy for Russia and its political system, especially among British intellectuals, remained considerable” even after the end of the alliance and crucially, since the beginning of the Cold War (1). Orwell was certainly aware of such a sympathy by his country’s intellectuals. As with most things, a multitude of reasons contributed to this phenomenon, but arguably of most significance is the idea that Britain then saw a romantic link towards the Soviet Empire, which stood in contradistinction with the US. There was a perceived notion of ‘old power’ in the sense of an ‘empire’, as opposed to the ‘new power’ that was best represented by the rising, economically-driven United States of America. This inexplicable sentimentality was a point which ignited the contempt of Orwell towards British intelligentsia. It would be fitting at this point to delineate that Orwell did not find fault with the average British citizen. His disdain is very clearly reserved for the upper echelons of the English society; the policymakers, the political representatives, the upper nobility who endorse the activities of British imperialism by providing support both in terms of financial contributions and in societal clout (“England” 2). It would be simplistic here to point towards Orwell’s Socialist tendencies as a reason for this criticism of the upper class, and while his political beliefs certainly played a part in Orwell’s target group of choice as a social critic, it is arguably Orwell’s identification with the middle-and-lower.

(34) Loo 31. classes – as opposed to any antagonism with the upper classes – that led him to produce criticism of such kind. Certain Orwell historians have pointed out this tendency to paint himself as closer to the ‘average Joe’ as a key part of Orwell’s crafted persona; interestingly, some childhood friends of Orwell recalled the author as an intellectual himself. Cyril Connolly, Orwell’s closest (and only, as some have argued) schoolfriend, noted that “the remarkable thing about Orwell was that alone among the boys he was an intellectual and not a parrot for he thought for himself” (179). The validity of the claim that Orwell was not as ‘everyman’ as he sought to make himself seem notwithstanding, that the author perpetuated/embodied (depending on which side one took in the debate of personality against crafted persona) such a character was in itself important, for it revealed Orwell’s intent to shun the label of a card-carrying intellectual. This distinction is crucial, for Orwell’s grievance has always been an echo of the average man’s grievance; this is reflected most ardently in the author’s portrayal of the characters of Boxer, Clover, and Benjamin, which will be examined more closely in detail later in the paper. To be clear, the argument is not that the novella could not be read without an understanding of the history behind it; one certainly could very well have read Animal Farm without any pre-requisite knowledge of the Second World War, or of Soviet Russia under Stalin, or even of Orwell as a writer, and still come away with an understanding of the narrative. Indeed, this is an idea prevalent in translation theories – that of the translated text as supplanting the original text – and to some degree, the supplanting of the original author with the translator. For monolingual readers, even an awareness that the text they are receiving is a work of translation does not impede the reading of the.

(35) Loo 32. translated text as being the original text for this set of readers, for the simple reason that these readers would likely never read the source text in its original language. In the course of his theoretical reflections, Lefevere proposed that: If a translation is, indeed, a text that represents another, the translation will to all intents and purposes function as that text in the receptor culture, certainly for those members of that culture who do not know the language in which the text was originally written. (History 1, italics added for emphasis) What is an allegory, if not “a text that represents another” (Lefevere, History 1)? For readers of Animal Farm who are unaware that the narrative is satirizing the events of the Russian Revolution and the vents post-revolution, the narrative of Animal Farm will still be a story of how a totalitarian dictator, Napoleon the pig, assumed power over an area by ousting his competitors to the ‘throne’ by nefarious means. What is ‘lost’ is a knowledge that Napoleon is a satirical reflection of Stalin. If these readers were to later gain knowledge of the historical facts of Soviet Union under Stalin, the connection between the narrative of Animal Farm and the historical narrative of the formation of Stalin’s Soviet Union would have just been as clear as if they had prior knowledge of it before reading the novella. As it stands, most modern readers, especially young readers, would belong to the camp which have no understanding of the relevant historical background pertaining to Animal Farm before reading the novella (which incidentally, is a popular choice for literature classes in high school). Just like a monolingual reader, they would have no access to the ‘source text’, which in the comparison this dissertation has drawn, would refer to Orwell’s political outlook vis-à-vis.

(36) Loo 33. Stalin and the Soviet Union. Their reception of the novella would be a wholly literary experience, in the sense that for them the echo of history would not have resonated as it would have for a reader with prior historical knowledge. Yet precisely because of the literary choices made by Orwell, from the anthropomorphizing of animals, the inclusion of a Seven Commandments which calls up images of religiosity and/or political manifestos, the narrative plot of a revolution and a description of life after said revolution, all of which are realistic events that would not be out of place in physical historical reality, the reader is constantly drawn in to the realness of the narrative. As a work of fictitious literature, Animal Farm leans more towards the reality of life because it sets its narrative in actual, human settings. The entire narrative happens on a farm, a physical setting that is easily relatable, with no bending of the laws of physics for example à la a sci-fi novel, a point most prominently observed in Orwell’s vivid rendition of the sheer magnitude of physical labour required to build the windmill, which the animals regarded as crucial for their survival without relying on the humans. Ingles describe Snowball’s plans for the construction of the windmill as “[taking] on a technical flavour and he had mastered theories of bricklaying, electricity and so on. He then produced a scheme that would transform Animal Farm – the building of a windmill (industrialisation)” (84-85). It is not unintentional that Orwell rendered Snowball’s thought process much like how an architect would proceed with his/her conception of constructing a building. Orwell’s realism in writing was a conscious decision to not let the reader forget that though he/she is reading a work of fiction, it was grounded in real life..

(37) Loo 34. Hence, in seeking to understand Orwell’s intention more completely – and by extension, the impact he wishes to achieve through his literary work – to ignore the historical background would be a reductive approach. On the subject of writing, Orwell opined that one would “never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand” (“Write” 5). To begin to understand this demon then would necessitate a certain degree of awareness about a basic tenet which gave it life. In Ingle’s The Social and Political Thought of George Orwell: A Reassessment, the author highlights three key reasons why Orwell endured as a writer internationally nearly seventy years after his death: firstly, the applicability of his message for a Cold War world during Orwell’s life, and then later for a world “where individual rights and basic privacy are increasingly at risk from state vigilance” (21). Secondly, Orwell was a writer who sought to encourage “a moral view of the world” through his works, as well as for being an author who “was what he wrote” (Ingles 22, emphasis original). Thirdly, Orwell’s literary style of writing, what Ingles describes as “transpicuous prose”, was direct, as a result of Orwell’s well-documented disdain for writing that was laden with jargon and deliberately obfuscatory language (Ingles 22). In another of Orwell’s essays, titled “Politics and the English Language”, Orwell railed against what he considered to be two deficient qualities of writing in the English language: “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision” (“Politics” 2). Good writing for Orwell had to evoke vivid imagery, yet not at the expense of clarity. Ingles’ argument for the three aforesaid reasons stemmed from his perspective of Orwell as an “imaginative writer”, as opposed to a fictional writer as Ingles argues.

(38) Loo 35. because “so much of [Orwell’s] work is based on personal experience and reportage, and is therefore not strictly fictional”: The key to the distinction I wish to make is intentionality. Where the intention is at least partly aesthetic, where Orwell is consciously using his narrative and imaginative powers to take us beyond the particular and to make a general, usually political point, I class this as imaginative. (23) The first reason, that of the historical developments which led to the Cold War, was a factor that though out of the control of Orwell, nonetheless lends credibility to the argument that Orwell’s reception must be seen in light of the accompanying historical context; interestingly, a veneer that would apply to both the author and the reader, as Ingles himself posited when he attributed Orwell’s fame to the commensurability with a Cold War readership. On the reader side of things, while the state of geopolitical tension known as the Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, a modern reader could certainly point towards a new state of tension between the US and China, and draw a parallel between modern day readership and Cold War readership. Indeed, the similarities are as striking as they are uncanny; two ideologically-opposed superpowers, both occupying different geographical locations, both key players in their specific regions, both possessing nuclear weapons. With mutually-assured destruction a doctrine that survived to this day, a ‘second Cold War’ unsurprisingly becomes more plausible compared to traditional warfare; given the recurrent historical circumstances, it would not be improper to suggest similarly ‘conditioned’ readers in the present age..

(39) Loo 36. Chapter 3: Narrative of Animal Farm We are all narrators in our daily lives, in our conversations with others…On occasion, we even take on the role of narrator: for example, when we read bedtime stories to small children. Narrating is therefore a widespread and often unconscious spoken language activity which can be seen to include a number of different text types in addition to what we often think of as the prototypical kind of narrative, namely literary narrative as an art form. – Monika Fludernik, Introduction to Narratology 3.1 Structuralist Approach to Narratology In the previous chapter, we looked at the historical and political motivations behind the writing of Animal Farm, by closely examining the author himself and how he reacted towards the political and social climate of his time. In this chapter, the focus will be on the breaking down of Animal Farm as a literary narrative. This differentiation between the text and its external influences is not for the purpose of isolating meaning; rather, it is to allow for an appreciation that takes into account the various links that tie each level of meaning to another, as well as how they are all invariably linked to form a narrative, so as to then be able to be considered as one entity, complete and standalone even as it is part of a larger taxonomy. The initial experience of reading something, fictional or non-fictional, is likely to be undertaken solely at the textual level, ceteris paribus. That is to say, the average reader does not go into an act of reading with an intent to consider the influences at play outside of the words on the particular medium that he/she is ‘receiving’ said reading from. As should be the case, for the most.

(40) Loo 37. essential piece of information is not the peripherals of the reading, but the reading itself. In reading a sign that beckons one to stop, the first impulse is not to consider why one should stop, who is requesting that one stop, how the sign came about to be there in the first place, and so forth: the first impact is simply, to receive a message to, well, stop. Such a proclivity to first digest the message is of course, even more pronounced in a longer body of work. In reading a manual about how to set up your new washing machine, one is more likely to accept the instructions printed on said manual, rather than to question whether the narrator is reliable, or whether the narrator is in fact attempting to advance a diabolical agenda by imploring the reader to set up his/her washing machine in a particular fashion. This tendency is amplified even further when the reading material in question is a work of fiction: the willing suspension of disbelief kicks into effect even more naturally, and there is a positive correlation between the reader’s penchant to accept the text ‘as is’ vis-à-vis the literary skill of the author. Though literary skill is certainly not the only factor, it is arguably the first that takes effect on a reader. One can disagree wholly with the message and still appreciate the beauty of its presentation. It is a realisation of this propensity in readers to be more willing to open up to ideas that they would have been disinclined to – as opposed to if the mode of presentation was in a more direct fashion – that led Orwell to conclude that he had to put more focus on his literary aesthetics, and to choose a literary form more carefully. Making use of Lefevere’s concept of systems, defined as “a set of interrelated elements that happen to share certain characteristics that set them apart from other elements”, the various levels of meaning in a narrative which are ‘generated’ by these “interrelated elements” then go on to act on the text, such that a reading of Animal Farm.

(41) Loo 38. and the resultant criticism that follows can be traced back to one or more of such factors (Rewriting 12). In order for one to tenably argue for an interpretation of meaning(s) that is derivative of so many distinct yet interconnected sources, a clear approach is a sine qua non. This dissertation would begin by first adopting a structuralist approach of narratology, which is the study of narrative and narrative structure, as a means of examining Animal Farm. The focus of this dissertation itself warrants the adoption of narratology. Firstly, an examination of the narrative structure ties in with Animal Farm neatly, given that the structure of the roman-à-clef stands out among Orwell’s body of works as the only fictional work whereby the main characters are not humans, but anthropomorphic animals, weaved into an allegory that is so blatantly linked to a historical actuality. Secondly, in arguing for an interpretation of Animal Farm as a work of translation from politics into aesthetics, a critical analysis of the narrative structure would offer insight into the initial motivations, which can be traced back from a particular aspect of the novella – not unlike how the process of back-translation would bring one back closer to the original source language in a sense. Most importantly, as opposed to other critical approaches which adds on a perspective from a separate and specialised field (though certainly useful in its own way), narratology as a theory examines the work ‘as is’, unravelling it without suggesting interpretations extraneous to the creation of the work, in the vein that say a postcolonial or feminist reading might have. Effectively, as a critical lens, the ideas of a structuralist approach to narratology will be used in this paper to explore angles from the trinity of text, author, and reader, with a conscientious effort not to deviate from.

(42) Loo 39. grounds not linked inherently to the work itself. On the subject of criticism, Lefevere had this to say: [i]nterpretation, a way of reading a work of literature which sometimes leads to writing about that work of literature [i.e. criticism] … has never been an enterprise of cast-iron scholarship and erudition only, but always of scholarship and erudition in the service of something else…There have always been different attempts at interpretation undertaken on the basis of a certain concept of what the world should be like (ideology) as well as a certain concept of what literature should be like (poetics), and these attempts, neo-classical, romantic, existential, psychoanalytic, have always been temporary, transient. (Manipulation 217, italics added for emphasis) In adopting a structuralist approach to narratology, the goal is to not slip into the trap of advancing a particular branch of literary theory – or translation theory for that matter – by doing what Lefevere argues as being “an attempt to influence the development of a given literature in a certain direction, the direction which happens to coincide with the poetics and ideology of the dominant critical school of the moment” (Manipulation 218). The intention in employing such a specific approach of narratology in this dissertation is for the purpose of adopting the categorisation of the different aspects of a narrative. Fludernik posits that “classical narratological theories are concerned with universal aspects of narrative…But in addition to this, a structuralist approach presupposes a system within which these various options and categories can be positioned” (88). The plausibility for such a positioning, as well as the terms used under the ambit of such an approach, which Fludernik attributed to “the two best-known.