Animal Farm / 1984 (The Collected Stories of the World's Greatest Writers)

372 pp. Brown full leather, gilt titles and decorations, all edges gilt, silk moire endpapers, ribbon marker bound in. Illustrations by Margaret Cusac. Animal Farm: A satirical look at Soviet totalitarianism using animals on a farm as an allegorical device. The revision of history by those in power is a theme that returns in Orwell's famous dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. While the setting of Animal Farm does not quite fit the parameters of a dystopian society, Orwell's work here seems to progress directly toward the speculations about future society in Nineteen Eighty-Four, common themes being the will to power, power's corrupting influence, and the obliteration of history. 1984: Orwell's view of a dystopian future where history is obliterated, constant surveillance is the norm, and the government mollifies the populace by pretending to be constantly winning some distant, constant war.