A criticising and very historically accurate representation of Stalinist Russia and the Russian Revolution.
I was buddy-reading this with a friend of mA criticising and very historically accurate representation of Stalinist Russia and the Russian Revolution.
I was buddy-reading this with a friend of mine, and together we pointed out the references to historical and political phenomena (including the March Revolution of 1848, the League of the Three Emperors, The Holodomor, the Cheka�), and, of course, connected characters from the book to their real-life counterparts (Old Major = Marx, Napoleon = Stalin, Snowball = Trotsky�).
This is a very important classic that I did not regret reading, although I must say that it reads better as an informative text that it reads as an entertaining “fairy-story�. It could have been written with more flavour with Orwell showing instead of telling, and also being less obvious with the allegories.
Nevertheless, this work is a historical document, and will surely be remembered for centuries to come....more
**spoiler alert** "Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in al**spoiler alert** "Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarious to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay."
"You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it."
"The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full."
"When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf."
"The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools."
"The way of the world is to bloom and flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons."
"Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
"...war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."
"He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."...more
I already knew before going in that I was going to love The Secret History, and that it was going to become a new favourite. It is currently one of myI already knew before going in that I was going to love The Secret History, and that it was going to become a new favourite. It is currently one of my most annotated books, with well over 140 tabs and even more underlinings. The writing is excellent, the plot is intriguing. The story has so much depth and there's a lot to discuss and theorise about, especially concerning how much of what Richard states is true to how the people in his life were, and true to what actually went down. I noticed so much foreshadowing my second time around. The book gets plus points for also being humourous at times. All in all, a clever story about pretentious people doing what they do for the aesthetic.
"Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs."
"I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive."
"Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it."
"Sometimes, when there's been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over."
"I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all."
"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not."...more
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