Negative. Orwell is an alleged sex pest, and a confirmed snitch.

Animal Farm, when read critically, essentially amounts to an aristocratic view of workers that sees us as stupid, gullible, and doomed to forever follow the whims of charismatic leaders with no critical thinking of our own. It erases our class interests and replaces class analysis with the idea that there are smart people, and there are workers, and the majority of smarter people will be unable to educate workers and so will inevitably abuse and take advantage of them.

1984 isn't as bad as Animal Farm, but it's not great either. It's still founded on Orwell's aristocratic view of humanity that focuses on "Great Man Theory" above all.

I recommend reading On Orwell, A Critical Read of Animal Farm, and Isaac Asimov on 1984.

If you want to read more about communist theory, I also made an introductory reading list, feel free to check it out! You could also wait until @Edie@lemmy.ml begins a weekly reading group for it over on Hexbear.net in a couple of weeks, and discuss the works on it with others!

In addition to the great links ppl already posted below:

What's so bad about George Orwell?

• He's antisemitic, homophobic, and racist. Specifically, he snitched out Jews, Black people, Homosexuals, and communists to British Intelligence. His list, here, includes him writing:
  • 8 variations of “Jewish?” (Charlie Chaplin), “Polish Jew, (Tom Driberg)” “English Jew,” or “Jewess.”
  • Paul Robeson - "ROBESON, Paul (US Negro) ...Very anti-white. [Henry] Wallace supporter."
    • Paul Robeson wasn't anti-white, just look at the welsh coal miners for whom Robeson Campaigned.
    • The testimony of Paul Robeson (one of the people Orwell snitched on), to HUAC (House of Unamerican activities committee) during the red scare.
  • Stephen Spender - "Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality"
  • Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish nationalist poet, and anti-imperialist.
  • George Padmore, Trinidadian journalist and anti-imperialist campaigner.
• His books Animal Farm and 1984 are used widely as anti-communist propaganda in schools in the US and UK. So much so that his animated animal farm film was funded by the CIA. There's a reason they teach George Orwell in schools and not Franz Fanon, Che, Huey P Newton, Malcolm X, Lenin, CLR James, etc.
• In 1941, illustrator Elias Gertrude approached Orwell, then an editor for the British Ministry of information, with an idea for a satirical cartoon film, portraying the Nazis as pig characters ruling a farm in a kind of dysfunctional fairy story. He told her that there was not much call for her idea, stole it, changed the name from A Fairy Story to Animal Farm, and changed the pig-nazis into Communists.
• Between 1952 and 1957, from three sites in West Germany, a CIA operation codenamed ‘Aedinosaur’ launched millions of ten-foot balloons carrying copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and dropped them over Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia — whose airforces were ordered to shoot the balloons down..
• Orwell, anti-communist: A criticism of Orwell and his Work - By Isaac Asimov.
• Orwell - "I have never really disliked Hitler."
• He attempted to rape one of his first courtships: "Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell."
• Redsails - On Orwell.
• Orwell worked as a British imperial cop in Burma for 5 years. His short story, Shooting an Elephant, uses ethnic slurs and denigrates burmese people.
• A reddit thread on George Orwell, Thread #2.

I thought Animal Farm was about the US when I read it in 8th grade. 😅

Devoid of context, I think 1984 is an ok story with good concepts, bad worldbuilding and double plus ungoodly written characters.

With context, it's a barely disguised anticommunist propaganda piece portrayed as as "anti authoritarian"

Its pretty OK

But holy shit is orwille fucking misogynistic right in the beginning there's a whole insert about how he wants to rape and torture women who go on his nerves

Garbage

It's slop.

Ok fiction. Terrible for real life application but that was mostly because western powers went crazy over his shit. He aint no Tolken but he is not as bad as Ayn Rand. Just meh, ok, decent, 5/10.

1984 has a special place in my heart because i had to write a thesis about it in school. And i majorly fucked it up … So not great.

Independently of his personality and his intentions with the books, they do more harm than good because they are too easy to see as critics of socialist countries. Especially animal farm. Even though 1984 is essentially our reality.

I liked both books as a young man, without knowing the history of the author. They say to never meet your heroes. I guess they're right. This does beg the question...can you separate the artist from their art?

They're carefully-crafted anticommunist works that trick liberals into thinking they're learning.

I've never read them, but bread and games and stuff.