Orwell did see the world as it is now & did a stellar job hitting the nail on the head in his own way.
Granted, throughout history, Humans are time & again guilty of repeating past mistakes & have always & will always repeat them.
That's why alot of the things he wrote hit so close to home then, now, & will still hit home with people 500 years after every one of us here are dust in the dirt.
Now, assuming that Animal Farm & 1984 are similar just because they are written by the same guy & have politics as the driving force of both stories is like assuming that the flicks 'A Clockwork Orange' & 'Full Metal Jacket' are similar because they were both violent & both made by Stanly Kubrick...or assuming that 'Schindler's List' & 'Minority Report' are similar because they're both Spielberg flicks that deal with murder.
Animal Farm is a fairy tale about how absolute power corrupts absolutely regardless of the best intentions one may have in the beginning.
1984 is nothing like that.
::Edit- Incedently, another modern fairy tale that is highly worth checking into is 'Watership Down' by Richard Adams::
