Talk:Old Major

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" and there is no way to escape the evil grasp of capitalism"?

This does not seem very NPOV to me. I think it is better replaced with " and there is no way to realistically escape the eventual domination of corruption and self-interest over ideals", the dampener in any real-world implementation of an ideological theory, and the real villain in Animal Farm. --Sohan213.42.2.21 07:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. --TantalumTelluride 15:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

• I changed it to be more specific and less harsh. Orwell did have hope, he didn't believe the failure of society was inevitable. He just wanted to be more realistic about it.--Catquas 05:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

"Evil grasp of capitalism"? Poppycock. There is nothing more evil than a communist! (though I wouldn't say that in the article). --Jupiter Optimus Maximus (talk) 09:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The full article for Animal Farm had the following quote at one point, indicating that at least one critic disagrees with the characterisation of Old Major as Lenin - does anyone know of a good source for the interpretation that Lenin is represented by Old Major? :

As an allegory, the story has one enormous failure: the persons of Lenin and Trotsky are combined into one [i.e., Snowball], or, it might even be truer to say, there is no Lenin-pig at all. Such a stupendous omission cannot have been accidental.... Orwell in his essays was fond of saying that both Lenin and Trotsky bore some responsibility for Stalinism; by eliding this thought... he may have been subconsciously catering to the needs of tragedy.

References

Hitchens

What is it with Christopher Hitchens? Every Orwell article I've seen has him as if he is some kind of god. Is he the author of a standard textbook or something? Crick, for example, doesn't get the same prominence, poor old leftie. SimonTrew (talk) 16:31, 1 May 2009 (UTC)