Animal Farm

Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"), and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".

The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story; U.S. publishers dropped the subtitle when it was published in 1946, and only one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime kept it. Other titular variations include subtitles like "A Satire" and "A Contemporary Satire". Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin for "bear", a symbol of Russia, which also played on the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques.

Animal Farm (song)

"Animal Farm" is the first track on the second side of The Kinks' 1968 album, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. The track was written by The Kinks' main songwriter, Ray Davies.

Lyrics and music

The lyrics of "Animal Farm" visit an escapism theme (one that would be returned to in "Apeman" and "Supersonic Rocket Ship"), with the singer wanting to flee to "where real animals are playing." He yearns "to be back there, among the cats and dogs and the pigs and the goats on Animal Farm, [his] animal home." The singer dreams of his girlfriend, "though she's far from home," but in his fantasy on animal farm, "she's by [his] side." The singer then offers to "take [her] where real animals are playing," "on Animal Farm."

When talking about "Animal Farm", Ray Davies said, "This was just me thinking everybody else's mad and we are all animals anyway - which is really the idea of the whole album."

"Animal Farm" has a folk feel, similarly to many other tracks on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Andy Miller wrote in his book, 33 and 1/3 book Kinks' The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society that "'Animal Farm' has a noticeably bigger sound than much of the rest of the album, with plenty of reverb applied to the drums, percussion and the tack piano that picks out the song's opening riff." When talking about the vocal line of "Animal Farm", Ray Davies said, "'The sky is wide' is a line I knew I could just about reach that note and, to me, the whole record is the way I sing that line. I knew that before it was recorded. I must have been so confident, so sure of myself."

List of Oz episodes

The following is a list of the episodes of the HBO television drama Oz. Each episode addresses a particular theme, which is addressed during Augustus Hill's narratives as well as during various points in the actual episode. During the first six episodes of season 6, Hill shares the narration with another inmate. In the season 5 episode "Variety", the narratives are replaced by short songs sung by series characters, in a variety show format.

Series overview

Episodes

Season 1 (1997)

The first season of Oz stars Ernie Hudson as Warden Leo Glynn, Terry Kinney as Emerald City Unit Manager Tim McManus, Harold Perrineau as inmate and narrator Augustus Hill, and Eamonn Walker as new inmate and devout Muslim Kareem Saïd.

It also stars Kirk Acevedo as Latino inmate Miguel Alvarez, Edie Falco as correctional officer Diane Whittlesey, Rita Moreno as prison counselor Sister Peter Marie Reimondo, Tony Musante as inmate and Mafia boss Nino Schibetta, Leon Robinson as inmate Jefferson Keane, J.K. Simmons as inmate and Aryan Brotherhood leader Vernon Schillinger, Lee Tergesen as new inmate Tobias Beecher, Sean Whitesell as cannibalistic inmate Donald Groves, Dean Winters as manipulative Irish inmate Ryan O'Reily, and B. D. Wong as the prison chaplain Father Ray Mukada.