1. It is curious that for some people, the central lesson of the Soviet experince is that communism doesn’t work. I thought about this and Animal Farm, and I realized that you can’t really make a textual case from the book that the revolution failed because communism doesn’t work. The problem at the end of the book isn’t that communism failed, but that they can’t tell the difference between the pigs and the humans.

2. When I taught this book to younger kids, I don’t remember any of them thinking Jones should still be in charge.

If you read Animal Farm and think Jones should have stayed in charge, you might have read Burke.

3. Although the original villain Jones stands in for the monarchists, it is interesting that all the farmers are really businessmen.