Geez...

It's really rather difficult to write from the perspective of a nineteenth century female textile mill-worker widow. Go figure.

Judge, O World.

The fact of the matter is, our assignment for this week in senior company was to write something (monologue is easiest) relating to one of the characters in Animal Farm (which we are adapting)'s impressions of the death of the Leninpig Old Major. The following are the two I've done so far. One is Snowball, the fervent, committed, revolutionary Trotskypig. The other is the appealingly cynical donkey Benjamin. For most effective contrast, read Snowball's account first.


Snowball's Account:

Old Major was an example to all his animal comrades in England and, in fact, every beast in yet unemancipated lands. Though he, like most pigs, was never forced to endure the hardship and interminable tribulations under the tyranny of Man as other animals, he still maintained an ardent empathy for his suffering comrades, and his will never flagged respecting the rebellion which he, in effect, called into existence. What grief then was ours when, but three days after his now legendary speech, he returned to the earth, as we all must in due time. Though the fact of inevitable demise is ever apparent to any who wish to think on such matters, it manages to excite, even after much warning, a sadness that seems to transcend all others that darken our short lives.
In the evening of that third day, Jones quietly buried the one who taught us Beasts of England. The sun, setting slowly as did that Revolutionary, cast through the weeping trees a glorious, dappled light on the heroic, full-grown tusks that crept from his mouth like immortal heralds of the final victory. Finally at peace, the wise old boar outwardly presented a stark contrast to his urgent, violent exhortations of three nights previous.
As they carried their prize boar of many a fair to his eternal rest at the foot of the orchard, Jones and his men staggered under old Major’s weight, symbolizing our inexorable rise above Man, to bury him as he buried the old boar. Yet through this paltry funeral, it was apparent that Major meant more to Jones than any other animal in his enslavement. As Jones drunkenly tottered to the gravesite, his face reflected the sun’s dying rays with a line of tears, barely perceptible in the fading gleam, which he sought to hide from the rest of the men. These tears were not, as might be believed, of sorrow for our dear Major’s death, but purely for grief at the loss of a locally famous beast¾ one of the few things in Jones’s life that had brought him anything akin to renown. Man can never truly grieve for an animal. His heart knows no compassion, kindness, or respect. He was not, in fact, weeping, but laughing. Laughing at what he saw as the end of the finest pig that ever walked the shining fields of England.
But it was not the end. As Man carried our hero to his grave, we watched, unseen, from our cages, stalls, and paddocks. I saw them all— pigs, dogs, horses, sheep and cattle— gazing from their respective confinements at the stirring sight. I wondered, while watching, if they all fathomed the meaning of this old boar, if they knew how much he and his message would change their lives, long after he had departed their simple memories.



Benjamin's Account.

It was the middle of the night. From this information one might naturally conclude that I was asleep. I was. Asleep, that is, until something very large and excited charged into my stall. It was Boxer, as riled and restless as I will ever see him. He stamped and whinnied to be absolutely sure of disturbing me, and then sputtered a few broken sentences, with which he communicated the general idea that he wished for me to accompany him somewhere— something about a pig and a dream. I didn’t refrain from telling him that I was quite happy with my own dreams, thank you very much, but I followed him anyway.
He led me to the end of the big barn. Sitting heavily on a platform in front of us was Jones’s prize boar, Willingdon Beauty, who made it a rule to have everyone refer to him as “Old Major.” This “Old Major” had thought it absolutely necessary to deprive the entire farm of an hour of sleep in order to expound upon a nocturnal hallucination. Strangely though, he never did. Instead, he told all the animals how miserable their lives were. After a few minutes of this abuse of their condition, most of them attained a pitiable state of emotional agitation. And who was responsible for this travesty of treatment? Man was his answer. To remove Man, he posited, was to remove hunger, overwork, and all other troubles from our lives. To Man’s elimination old Willingdon urged every animal, though no mention was given as to who might rule in his place after he had been overthrown. The old pig finished his declamations with a stirringly senseless song, which was then sung five times in painful succession.
Three days later, old Willingdon called it a life and died. Being so soon after his great, frothing oration, this seemingly sudden passing moved many, especially the pigs, to loud protestations of grief. In the evening of the same day, Jones came out to bury the boar, along with a few farmhands, who grumbled at the extra work. The animals looked on at the entombment of their superpig with such gloom that one might have thought the farmers were burying food. From their compound I espied Snowball and a few other pigs, regarding the scene with what they obviously deemed was its due solemnity. Half a minute later I looked back, and noticed that Napoleon, another pig, had shoved Snowball to one side, and was now observing the funeral in grave prominence.
While this took place, farmer Jones carried Willingdon’s already decomposing corpse to its allotted hole by the orchard, shedding small, inconspicuous tears for the animal in whom he had arguably taken most pride, and the only one for whom he had felt anything resembling affection. How fitting, then, that this same beast had three nights before denounced him as the ultimate evil.

Ahhh... the sweet verisimilitude of human passion defies description.

Eugene Onegin. Bloody fantastic opera, what. Even with the lamentable manners of the largely student audience, I enjoyed myself to the full. It's a shame though, people have such difficulty taking nineteenth-century drama seriously. It's tense, highly emotional stuff, but it now seems so over the top that people can't relate to it. One must, in effect, transport one's self to a different era's attitudes, modes and morals. This seems, sadly, to be a bit too much effort for most highscool/university students.