wheelz1138

I found a copy of 1984 in my college bookstore last year. Also that same day, after having seen the movie first, I bought Slaughterhouse Five, both in paperback. I think that combo is one of the best, and most complimentary of each other than any other two books of the 20th century. I saw the animated Animal Farm in elementary school, and though I don't really remember much, I do remember the pigs... anyone else think The Beatles were directly referencing the swine in their song "Piggies"? It would be absolutely impossible for me to believe they wrote the song without some indirect assistance.

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Buddy Glass

Care to elaborate on how it would be "nice"?

Shawn

I don't see how equality for all people could be anything but nice.

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If I'm online, be nice, I'm escaping.

Buddy Glass

Oh, don't tell me you still believe that rosy fairy-tale bullshit. How old are you, man??

Communism is not simply equality for everyone. Communism is a utopian dream inspired and based on marxism, a historicist theory that claims to have understood the inevtiable development of history without taking into account that this plausbility is nothing more than a complete misunderstanding of the scientific method, as Popper would have it. Inevitably their vision for a utopian paradise on earth lead to the gulags, the murdering, the suffering. Anyone who did not comply to the agenda of the communist regimes - anyone who dared revolt against their oppressiveness - were mercilessly killed.

So, no communism is not "equality for everyone". It's a little more complex than that. Perhaps if you tried reading Marx and Engels or Lenin or even some Sartre you'd start seeing the bigger picture.

Have a good day.

Shawn

I said true communism would be nice, and then said that it's impossible. Popper refined the scientific method after Marx was long dead.

In its ideal form, communism is workers rebellion, which is replaced with paradise. The ideal is nice... in practice, not so much. That's what Animal Farm was all about... you don't have to be a dick about it.

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If I'm online, be nice, I'm escaping.

Eli Cash

I really liked Down and Out in Paris and London, and so now want to read his writings from the time when he was a cop in Burma.

Animal Farm and 1984 are, of course, great but I read them so long ago... These non-fiction things are a more recent discovery.

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Buddy Glass

"The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. "Vámonos, amigos," he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight."

Well, everyone knows that Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't?

I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum.

Eli Cash

Margot: Do you send my mother your clippings and your grades from college?
Eli: Please stop belittling me.

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Buddy Glass

Oh, I love Wes Anderson. Have you seen Darjeeling yet? Immaculate.

Delvok

Animal Farm is one of my favourite novels.

Anyone here read 1984? If so, what did you think?

deserve to die

cowpops

I had to read it in 8th grade.

I did not enjoy it, but I learned a lot.

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GridCanal

My class read it in 9th grade. I enjoyed it. I have not read 1984 yet, but my friend has, and he says it's very enlightening.

cowpops

1984 is SOOOO interesting. I read that recently as well. I enjoyed it, but man. That book will change your thinking.

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Arin

I never really understood the Communist Revolution until I read Animal Farm, which I found chilling and fascinating. 1984 was excellent too, very suspensefully written, very depressing, but ingenious nonetheless.

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O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!