Orwell is significant for his unwavering commitment, both as an individual and as an artist, to personal freedom and social justice. While he wrote a variety of works, his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) are best known and most widely read. Animal Farm, a deceptively simple animal fable about a barnyard revolt, satirizes the consequences of the Russian Revolution, while also suggesting reasons for the universal failure of most revolutionary ideals. Orwell's skill in creating a narrative that functions on several levels is almost unanimously applauded, and the novel is generally regarded as a masterpiece of English prose. Nineteen Eighty-Four attacks totalitarianism, warning that absolute power in the hands of any government can deprive a people of all basic...