The shitty thing about reading the wrong books!

I have a few people I know who teach or have taught English literature and I know for sure that either of them would shriek at me if they heard what I was up to this past August School holiday. Well I had very limited options to dodge the kind of misdemeanor I was up to.

To cut the long story short, it turns out that I have a niece in her grade 11 and it’s always a pleasure to have her at my home during the school holiday. Every time she is at my home, she will ask me question about current affairs and I will give her answers from my fingertips. It seems this has given her the impression that her uncle is ‘extremely knowledgeable’. First it was an arithmetic question and luckily I was able to solve the question with relative ease. Being the uncle who at times is fond of a little bit of some show off to his nieces and nephews, I went further to illustrate and give her tips on that particular topic. That was the biggest mistake.

Accordingly, one day she comes to where I was sitting and starts to ask me questions about Animal farm the 1950’s political satire novel by George Orwell. She mentions the book is part of their English literature syllabus. I have read the book a couple of times, but not recently. As a matter of fact I first read the book when I was probably in my sixth or seventh grade. The most unfortunate thing is that I never took English literature as a subject at school. I have no clue what teachers expect of students from these books.

I actually first read Animal farm earlier than most blokes do because reading books was all I did once I learned how to read. It is the shitty thing about growing up in a home with book shelves full of different kinds of books all the time. This was the shitty thing about reading the wrong books at a young age – I never understood ‘jack’ about what the literature was all about. I’d be done reading Animal farm and start reading another book – that would have been Mine Boy, The imprisonment of Obatala, Weep not, child or any other book. There were times I’d be at home on a weekend and reading the Quran. Not that I have complaints about this.

So when my niece asked me to give her a narrative of Animal farm, I wasn’t going to admit that I knew very little in the context of the English in Literature syllabus. This is what my friends who teach or have taught English literature would even slap me for.

Here is my failed attempt to expound Animal farm;

I think Squealer has fallen out with Napoleon. He has not been heard from much recently. With the massive depreciation of the Farm currency and all the electricity power deficits the farm is experiencing, I expected the chief propagandist to give the animals explanations, statements and just generally hope that the Pigs Forum is in charge and on top of things. Who else would be better placed to give hope to boxer and clover not to give up but work even harder? Of course it’s Squealer. It’s only Squealer who can make Boxer say that ‘Napoleon is always right’ and ‘I will work harder’, even with the current general despondency among the animals.

Alas, it is Vincent who has been giving statements as acting propagandist. The other day it was Amos who gave statements during an appearance on the weekend interview. I actually thought Squealer had traveled out of the farm. What could be the explanation of Amos addressing the farm animals in the capacity of chief propagandist? I also don’t see it fit for Vincent to take up the role of acting chief propagandist when Squealer is well and alive. It definitely defies the laws of animalism and of course very much against protocol and etiquette.

You see, things haven’t really been the same since Mr Jones lost control of the farm. The Animals had celebrated after the rebellion was successful in anticipation of a more prosperous farm. The prosperity of the farm was all in Old Major’s dream which he had shared with all the animals. It was a dream of lower taxes, more food rations (or more money in pockets if it were humans), a new animal driven constitution within 90 days of the rebellion, a new but better pension policy, no tax on pension, and so many more. However Old Major died before his entire dream was achieved. In no time, Snowball who had taken the initiative of interpreting and explaining the socialist dream of Old Major was expelled from the farm.

Later on, Squealer as the chief propagandist held a press conference at which he explained to the animals that Snowball had all along been a traitor. In fact, even before the rebellion at the time Mr Jones spent his time drinking whisky all the time in his quarters, Snowball was enlisted as a super spy to be giving information to Mr Jones. Snowball had in fact worked against the rebellion and that the recognition of state counsel for his alleged contribution during campaigns and the battle of the cowshed which he got would be reviewed and possibly withdrawn. Squealer also accused Snowball for the death of Old Major. How else would you explain Snowball campaigning to be leader soon after the rebellion when there was no vacancy?

Why did Snowball take it upon himself to start teaching the other animals how to read and write? What followed was that Squealer blamed everything that went wrong on the farm on Snowball. In addition, Squealer had made it a point to paint neighbouring farmers Pilkington and Fredrick in bad light. All the animals were told not to ever have dealings with Pilkington especially. Squealer had done his task very well. Even when the hens had dared to revolt and called a meeting they termed Chuundu chaitwa where they would discuss a plan to protest against the rule of the pigs by breaking reared eggs and not producing any eggs at all, Squealer had quickly addressed the animals and sternly warned the hens that they would be dealt with by the heavy arm of Napoleon’s law. Napoleon’s dogs were consequently put on alert and sent to ruffle the hens. Jessie and bluebell had immediately barked for five minutes as a warning and the hens were later starved into submission.

The hens were consequently accused of trying to secede from Animal farm and trying to create a birds’ farm. The hens were accused of promoting regionalism instead of animalism. Squealer had immediately rushed to the sheep and made them recite the slogan; four legs good, two legs bad. When the hens had tried to complain that the slogan discriminated against them, Squealer had explained that only two legs without feathers were bad. Although they didn’t voice it out (they couldn’t voice out or the dogs would be upon them for breaking the animal farm law), the chickens certainly knew that since the ‘feathers’ part was never mentioned or written anywhere, this was definitely a discriminatory slogan.

You see up until then, Squealer had done a pretty good job as the chief propagandist. I really suspect he has fallen out with Napoleon no wonder he has been pushed out of the limelight. That is possible as napoleon could consider sleek squealer a threat. Of-course Squealer had challenged Napoleon for the leadership of animal farm shortly after the death of Old Major. This is reason enough to suggest that Squealer is a threat to Napoleon. Like Snowball I don’t see him sticking around for long.

Sidelined or not Squealer has a lot of problems to contend with now that Pilkington has stopped buying as much wood as before. The price of wood has really dropped to the lowest level hence the farm is not having any foreign currency. The biggest underground mine of wood is in Squealers constituency and he is finding it tough to explain to the rest of the animals and his fellow swine that the animals will have their daily food rations amid the current economic atmosphere and low wood price coupled with the low corn yield the previous farming season.

To put this problem into perspective, 4,000 animals at More-panny wood mine will be laid off, 1,600 more animals have also been sent on forced unpaid leave at Bar-Loo-Bar wood mine. These are enough problems to send a pig on sabbatical. But Squealer is not the type of pig to be kept in the background and he has been speaking of late again. He was on the weekend interview the other week where he blamed all the problems of the farm on everybody but himself and the other pigs. He blamed the electricity power deficit at the farm on Mr Jones for having failed to build the wind mill to power the farm.

Snowball was specifically cited in that highly charged interview for sabotaging the windmill project their by causing the shortage of electricity on the farm. Squealer seems to be the best at accusing everyone else (especially Snowball) but himself, for all the problems at the farm. Squealer has further been taking a swipe at the critics of Napoleon and the Pigs Forum telling them that they understood little or nothing about farmnomics. He singled out one professor SirSir for lacking knowledge. These sentiments were later echoed by Amos, who told Napoleon’s detractors to go and read farmnomics again.

In fact Squealer has been reiterating the point that no one should question Napoleon. Napoleon knows best and Napoleon is always right. Napoleon doesn’t need to explain to the other animals regarding the rising cost of survival on animal farm, or anything for that matter. Napoleon knows best and the sheep can sing and recite that all day.