Preview

The Potato Eaters

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
305 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Potato Eaters
I don’t know if the world really understands the living conditions of communist countries. The static number of deaths due to communism is approximately 94 million. Compared to the deaths of the holocaust which would stand at 11 million. 94 million is a to high number, when dealing with innocent lives. The Potato Eaters, a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, a novel by George Orwell published in 1954, and “Dog,” a 1977 song performed by Pink Floyd and written by David Gilmour explore the idea that communists countries have harsh conditions that will be apart of their everyday lives, and an average person has no idea. To explain to the average person the true realities that lies behind the wall of communism. I have chose a specific art, novel, and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    In a child-like setting in an almost fantastical realm where animals can talk, read, and even govern themselves, Animal Farm possesses a light-hearted beginning where a simple, countryside farm delves deeper into the consequences a dictatorial sovereign. After World War II, many countries began to notice the ideals of communism and its potential benefits nurtured from the Russian Revolution, without acknowledging the negative ramifications involved. George Orwell mirrors the Russian Revolution through situational irony, where the outcome is unexpected verbal irony, when the words contradict the intended meaning, and dramatic irony, where concepts are unclear to the characters although the reader understands. Orwell’s allegorical fable, Animal Farm, effectively informs the reader of significant incidents which portray Stalin’s degradation in the Russian Revolution through the implementation of three distinct types of irony to convey his personal opinions on each matter.…

    • 1162 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    On the fateful day in November the “symbol” of communism, the Berlin Wall, was tore down by both the West in East Germans. This act signified the culminating point of the Revolutionary changes sweeping Europe, and the eventual fall of the Soviet Union and most Communism as people. Throughout the Soviet era, the side of West Germany was under harsh Communist rule. This breaking down of the wall had such a greater meaning, it was the birth of freedom to all those currently oppressed. Such an action had great repercussions on the world, back then and yet still today.…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The terrors of a totalitarian government presented in George Orwell's 1984 apply not only to the Party, but also to the Stalinist Russia of the 1930's. Frightening similarities exist between these two bodies which both started out as forms of government, and then mutated into life-controlling political organizations which "subordinated all institutions and classes under one supreme power" (Buckler 924). Orwell shows how such a system can impose its will on the people through manipulation of media, constant supervision as aided by technology, and the threat of pain, both physical and mental. Orwell also shows how the state has more subtle methods for imposing its authority, such as the manipulation of language and propaganda as they are used to achieve the goal of absolute power for the system. A key parallel between the Party and Stalin's Communism is the use of technology and communication to control the economic, social, and personal aspects of life.…

    • 1020 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    AP History

    • 843 Words
    • 1 Page

    Co. “ demonstrates that people could see the harm in communism by showing how well the…

    • 843 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One evening in 1950 a Houston couple entered a Chinese restaurant. The woman, a radio writer, wanted the proprietor's help in producing a program on recent Chinese history. Overhearing their conversation, a nearby man rushed out, phoned the police, and informed them that people were "talking Communism." The couple was immediately arrested and jailed for 14 hours before the police concluded they had no case. At about the same time a policeman in Wheeling, West Virginia, discovered some penny-candy machines dispensing goodies with tiny geography lessons. One lesson, under the hammer-and-sickle Soviet flag, read: "USSR Population 211,000,000. Capitol Moscow. Largest country in the world." "This is a terrible thing to expose our children to," pronounced…

    • 1696 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The novel that elevated George Orwell to literary fame was Animal Farm; a satirical ‘fairy tale for adults’ based on the themes of totalitarianism and Stalinism. In accordance with the theme, the book heavily satirizes the Russian Revolution; both directly and indirectly, and therefore gives rise to a host of examples to substantiate the statement: ‘Totalitarianism thrives on the exploitation of the weak by the strong’; the topic of discussion in this essay.…

    • 1590 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mankind just never seems to be able to come to their full realization of how it is bad. To this day, not everyone is treated same all the time, sometimes some are indeed treated different due to their sex, gender and race. There are still some anti- communists out there but very few or no attention is driven towards them. But one major issue that had been continued is the fact that some countries still don’t want to accept others’ unique opinions. According to the WSWS, the Polish parliament recently adopted a de-communization law, giving local governments one year to remove all symbols representing communism from the public space. This indicates that to this day people are still against communism and very few have failed to…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Red Scare Research Paper

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages

    When news broke out that communism was in America, the public was astonished and feared what communism in the U.S. government would do. Many politicians baffled on why they were even trying to run for office. What they did not see coming was the popularity that would follow communism in the future. The fear did not come from the Communist Party itself, but the obsession of a small group of people with power to stop the Red Scare that spread rapidly in the America in both the early 1900’s and 1940’s.…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Communism is a very dangerous thing. It spread like wildfire in the 1920s and 1950s after each world war respectively. But today, I am here to inform you about a new kind of Communism. It is the month of May, in the year 2014, and the Cold War has been over for nearly 3 decades now, but communism is still a very real thing, that has taken on a brand new form. This isn’t exactly a factual description of communism, it’s more along the lines of things that I think are communist. But these threats are very real, they are very scary, and they come in the form of modern day trends.…

    • 761 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavenka Drakulić’s How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed is an interesting and educational book about the struggles and dysfunction of communism in Croatia. I found this book incredibly personal because it showed the point of view of a woman who is experiencing life growing up in a country where communism had ended, but continued in the minds of it’s people. Not only does she speak of the lack of common luxuries that Croatia has, but she relates them to western culture in a time when America was progressing faster than we ever have. This book was interesting because while reading it, the reader is not lectured with facts about communism and World War II, but instead given a personal view of someone stuck in a country they feel oppressed in. Another interesting aspect is the author wrote that she was forced to recycle, collect and conserve everything that was possibly useful. However this recycling and collecting was not for environmental protection, it was because of fear, fear of running out of supplies and not being able to get more, something that civilians under communism would have to deal with everyday. If anyone had a problem with anything that involved the government including running out of basic needs like milk, it was their problem. Drakulic observed a friend who wrote articles about the problems of communism, she was later punished for it. She was shunned by society just for speaking her mind. This novel gives the reader a personal feel of civilians stuck in a communist country.…

    • 867 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Propaganda In Animal Farm

    • 1533 Words
    • 7 Pages

    That is what makes it so horrific; it takes morals and replaces them with human ideals that are not always just. This strong propaganda was also used destructively in Russia while under Stalin’s Communist rule. Newspapers like the Pravda, Russian for truth, told the unassuming people of all the “wonderful” things their leader was doing and kept questioners quiet. It was this propaganda and blindness of the people that made the Russian Revolution so harsh. The novel Animal Farm was written by George Orwell in protest of such totalitarianism. The novel is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and the story of the Russian Revulsion could not be told without propaganda. In the novel, Squealer, the pig, stands for propaganda in a profound way. Squealer propagandizes the animals, progressing from twisting words to telling half-truths to…

    • 1533 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Chicago's Chinatown

    • 3929 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Epoch Times. (2009, October). Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. Epoch Times International , p. 24.…

    • 3929 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    American History

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “Beginning in the 1950s, maintaining a non-Communist South Vietnam became crucial in American efforts to contain communism” Goldfield (2010). “Communism is a very attractive theory, particularly for the poor masses of a developing country” Kallie Szczepanski (2010). “Communism is a system of government, like democracy or dictatorship. “The main point about it is that (in theory) everyone is equal; there is no single person of small groups of people who rule the others” Goldfield (2010).” There are also no social classes like the working classes, aristocracy etc. ” Goldfield (2010). ” It has been demonstrated that this system cannot work and usually becomes a dictatorship” Goldfield (2010). “In the beginning in 1949, fear of domestic Communists gripped America. The country spent most of the 1950s under the influence of a Red Scare, led by the virulently anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere in America, and encouraged a witch hunt-like atmosphere of hysteria and distrust” Kallie Szczepanski (2010).…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Antithesis Vs Communism

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Will Rogers once stated, “Communism is like prohibition; it’s a good idea but it won’t work.” Since it’s inception in mid 1800’s, Communism has been an idea that has had its ups and downs. Based on the idea of eliminating class antagonism, Communism is a synthesis of two separate entities. In a class system there exist owners and workers. Owners control the majority of the wealth and means of production. These persons were referred to as the bourgeoisie where as the workers, who only earned a small wage, were known as the proletariat. These two units can be seen as a thesis and antithesis, and by combining these two a synthesis, or in this case Communism, was created.…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    During most of the twentieth century, communism was one of the world’s dominant international political movements. People reacted to it in different ways—as a source of hope for a radiant future or as the greatest threat on the face of the earth. When Karl Marx wrote his Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848, he had no idea how communism would take off in the twentieth century. Marx sincerely believed that under communism people would live more freely than ever before. This belief turned out to be very ironic. Those who took power in the twentieth century as communist dictators used Karl Marx’s ideas as justification for a ruthless, single-party dictatorship. A prime example was Mao Zedong, whose skilful leadership played a large part in the communists’ successful capture of power in mainland China in 1949. Communist China turned out to be a dystopian society, much like the bleak, artificial society in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In Huxley’s dystopia, he predicts possible problems of Communist beliefs, problems that became a reality in 20th century communist China.…

    • 2140 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays