O romance Animal Farm (“A revolução dos bichos”), de George Orwell, se passa numa fazenda onde animais, liderados pelo porco Old Major, decidem fazer uma revolução. São apresentados abaixo dois trechos do romance: o primeiro, de sua parte inicial, quando a fazenda ainda é administrada por Mr. Jones; o segundo, de sua parte final, quando passa a ser controlada pelos animais.
PART 1
Word had gone round during the day that Old Major (…) had had a strange dream on the previous
night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It had been agreed that they should all
meet in the big barn as soon as Mr. Jones was safely out of the way.
(…) When Major saw that they had all made themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively,
[5] he cleared his throat and began: “Now comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face
it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. (…) Why then do we continue in this miserable
condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human
beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word: Man.
Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and
[10] overwork is abolished forever. Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does
not give milk, he does not lay eggs (…), yet he is lord of all the animals. (…) Is it not crystal clear,
then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only
get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own. (…) That is my message to you,
comrades: Rebellion!”
PART 2
[15] Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there
was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion (...).
Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves
any richer − except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs. (...) It was not that these creatures did
not work, after their fashion. There was, as Squealer* was never tired of explaining, endless work
[20] in the supervision and organization of the farm. Much of this work was of a kind that the other
animals were too ignorant to understand. For example, Squealer told them that the pigs had to
expend enormous labours every day upon mysterious things called “files”, “reports”, “minutes” and
“memoranda”. These were large sheets of paper which had to be closely covered with writing, and
as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt in the furnace. This was of the highest importance
[25] for the welfare of the farm, Squealer said. But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their
own labour; and there were very many of them, and their appetites were always good. As for the
others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. They were generally hungry, they
slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they laboured in the fields. (…)
And yet the animals never gave up hope. More, they never lost, even for an instant, their sense of
[30] honour and privilege in being members of Animal Farm. They were still the only farm in the whole
county — in all England! — owned and operated by animals. (…)
* Squealer is the name of a pig.
George Orwell Animal Farm. Londres: Longman, 1945
The first paragraph contains three clauses in the Past Perfect.
In these clauses, this verb tense refers to actions that can be described as:
