Watch the video and fill the blanks with the missing words:

Meaning – motivation – values – author – injustice – symbolise – totalitarian – strict – revolution –

owner – event – material – metaphor – criticise – arrested – classes

1. What is an allegory?

Not only is Animal Farm an unforgettable tale about animals rebelling against their human ________,
it’s also an allegory for the Russian ________.

But first, what is an allegory?

An allegory is a story which is actually an extended ________: all the elements in the story
________things from a similar real-life situation. While the story has a simple surface meaning, it
also carries another ________ – one that is often about a real political or historical ________.

2. George Orwell

Who was George Orwell and what was his ________ to write Animal Farm? And why did he take an
allegorical approach to ________the Russian Revolution?

Eric Arthur Blair was born in 1903 in India. George Orwell was his pen name. Orwell was a police
officer, soldier, teacher, journalist, and an acclaimed ________. In the late 1920s, Orwell chose a life
of poverty. This experience gave him ________for his novel Down and Out in Paris and London; he
even tried to get ________to see what prison life was like. He failed. Orwell was concerned about
social ________and the mistreatment of the lower________: he was particularly interested in the
effects of totalitarianism on ordinary people and in the ability of political power to corrupt good
people. In fact, Orwell’s most famous novels Animal Farms and 1984 are profound smackdowns on
________regimes, so what is a totalitarian regime?

3. Totalitarianism

A totalitarian government controls everything: the economy, the media, the beliefs, and ________of
its people. A totalitarian government is like having ________controlling parents.

Questions

1. ______________________________________________________________________________

2. ______________________________________________________________________________

3. ______________________________________________________________________________

4. ______________________________________________________________________________

5. ______________________________________________________________________________

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