Lamron Lit Corner: Animal Farm and what banning books means

Among the most banned books of the 20th century sits George Orwell’s novel 1984 and novella Animal Farm, both philosophical looks at the same idea, but through radically different lenses. On the one hand, 1984 (covered previously in the Lamron Lit Corner) imagines and realizes a “utopian” society in which a unified government holds complete control over massive amounts of lands and populations; banned for a number of reasons, including mentions of sex, mental illness, and torture, 1984 was also banned in the USSR for its clearly anti-authoritarian message. Even more clear was Orwell’s Animal Farm, which is not only anti-authoritarian, but also specifically anti-USSR. That begs the question: why was Animal Farm also frequently banned in the United States if it criticized their main rivals?

You read that right. Animal Farm, which tells an absurdist tale about a farm with sentient animals overthrowing their human controllers and establishing broken control, according to Carnegie Mellon University, “has been accused by detractors as Communist propaganda and a seditious call to overthrow organized states. Various attempts to remove the book from libraries have occurred and the title continues to appear on numerous lists of ‘problem books.’” 

A book very clearly calling out the faults of authoritarianism in the USSR was also attacked here in the states, even though Orwell made it clear that the novella was a representation of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and Stalin’s regime. What sort of threat could it possibly pose to the U.S., to the point where “the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covertly purchased the film rights from the Orwell estate and financed an animated version of the film; altering multiple plot points and changing the ending in an effort to ‘combat the culture of communism.’”

Animal Farm and Orwell’s work is just a drop in the puddle when it comes to books banned in the U.S., not simply because it reveals the startling similarities between the mid-1900s United States and USSR. Think more modern: how about Harry Potter? The American Library Association (AMA) has been tracking the most banned books since 1990; the Harry Potter series rated the #1 most banned work between 2000 and 2009 for themes of witchcraft, sorcery, and anti-Christian practices. Flash forward to the 2020s and JK Rowling’s continuous anti-trans behavior has flipped the support, and the children’s novel George by Alex Gino was the AMA’s most challenged book of 2018, 2019, and 2020, telling the story of a young transgender girl. Russia remains our rival in most global political issues, and in eerily similar fashion to Orwell and Animal Farm, Vladimir Putin raised the cancellation of JK Rowling in defense of his invasion of Ukraine. History once again finds a way to repeat itself.

So how do we proceed with banned books, a “cancel culture” of its own that has lived far longer than Rowling or Orwell, dating all the way back to the printing press? A piece of literature that raises the faults in any sort of government or promotes a new ideology, whether it be the USSR, the U.S., modern Russia, etc., will always be targeted. You don’t even have to read the books to see what these books expose: a government’s fear reveals more than anything.