National Endowment for the Humanities
Animal Farm: Allegory and the Art of Persuasion
Introduce your class members to allegory and propaganda with a series of activities designed to accompany a study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Readers examine the text as an allegory, consider the parallels to collective farms and the...
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George Orwell: A Brief Biography
Studying an author can help learners better understand literature. George Orwell's biography is the focus of this presentation, which leads into an activity and discussion about concepts connected to Animal Farm.
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"Shooting An Elephant": George Orwell's Essay on His Life in Burma
High school readers examine George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" for examples of symbolism, metaphor, connotation, and irony. They analyze how these literary tools convey the writer's main point and contribute to the persuasive...
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A New Candidate for Animal Farm
Students create an advertising campaign in which a candidate from Animal Farm will run for an upcoming election. In this follow-up activity to George Orwell's Animal Farm lesson, students explore propaganda, rhetoric, and satire as they...
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Allegory in Painting
Young scholars examine how allegory is defined and used in the visual arts. They create a list of the arts, and list the objects, symbols, and figures that suggest each art category, analyze various paintings, and identify the...
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Allegory in Painting
Students define allegory and discuss its use in visual arts. They identify and explain allegorical themes in a number of images.
Curated OER
Allegory in Painting
Students define allegory and discuss its use in the visual arts, examine paintings from various time periods and identify allegorical themes in them, and explain what makes an image allegorical.