The story of “Animal Farm” is set on Manor Farm, where the animals are badly treated by their cruel and incompetent owner Mr Jones. A spirit of revolt grows among the animals, inspired by Major, the old boar, who develops a philosophy known as “Animalism”, which urges animals to revolt against their human masters, to take control of the agricultural system and to run it in their own interests. After Major’s death the animals seize their chance to rebel against Jones and succeed in ousting him and taking control of the farm, which they rename Animal Farm. The leading role is taken by the pigs, portrayed as the most intelligent of the animals, and after the success of the revolution a power-struggle breaks out between two of their number, Napoleon and Snowball. With the aid of a trained pack of dogs, Napoleon banishes Snowball from the farm and makes himself a barnyard dictator. From then on, the farm is run in the interests of Napoleon and the pigs. One by one, the principles of Animalism are abandoned and the other animals are treated as badly by the pigs as they were by Jones.
Orwell intended the book as a satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution and of the way in which Communism had developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Major personifies Marx, Snowball Trotsky, Napoleon Stalin and Jones the Tsar. Other animals on the farm stand not for individual historical figures but for types- for example the simple-minded but strong and good-hearted horse Boxer stands for that section of the Soviet working class which continued to support Communism wholeheartedly even during the Stalinist era. The dogs represent the security apparatus of the Red Army and NKVD, the pig Squealer the propaganda system, the mare Mollie who deserts Animal Farm the Russian émigré community, and so on. The allegory is somewhat simplified- there is, for example, no character precisely equivalent to Lenin- but most of the main developments in Soviet history have their equivalents in the book- the revolution, the Stalin-Trotsky split, the Five Year Plans (symbolised by the building of a windmill), the purges, the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the German invasion of 1941.
The Essay on Animal Farm Napoleon Pigs Animals
Napoleon was a pig in more than one sense. Words that you associate with pigs are not often pleasant. 'Pig' referring to one who is greedy and has more than their fair share; 'pig headed' refers to one who is extremely stubborn and thinks they are always right; 'the pigs' refer to police, or other figures of authority. Napoleon became dictator of Animal Farm merely due to the fact that he was a ...
Orwell wrote the book in the winter of 1943/44, at the height of the Second World War. To criticise Russia in Britain at this point in history took courage, as there was a consensus on both Left and Right of the political spectrum that Stalin was our gallant ally; many on the Left still clung to the illusion that the Soviet Union was a utopian workers’ paradise, while the Right regarded criticism of a British ally during wartime as unpatriotic. Orwell himself was politically on the Left, but he had become disillusioned not only with Stalinism but also with what he called “violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power-hungry people”; such a revolution could only lead to the people exchanging one despotism for another.
Orwell not only satirised the history of the Soviet Union up to 1943, he also used the book in order to predict the way in which the Soviet system might develop in future. He correctly predicted that the Soviets would defeat Nazi Germany (represented by the vicious farmer Frederick).
The book ends with the pigs becoming indistinguishable from the humans who still run the other farms in the district; this can be taken as a prediction that Stalinist Communism would inevitably end by reverting to a capitalist system indistinguishable from that prevailing in the West. When he wrote “1984” a few years later, however, he seems to have changed this view, because the system over which Big Brother presides is not capitalism but what Orwell called “Oligarchical Collectivism”. Although Orwell continued to believe in democratic Socialism, it seems that by the time “1984”was published he no longer believed that Socialism and democracy were indivisible, but rather that it was possible to sustain a totalitarian system in which property would nominally be owned collectively but would be controlled in the interests of an elite group of Party leaders.
The Essay on The irony in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”
The last sentence in the book Animal Farm relates to the book in so many ways. First I must say that in the end the pigs became what they hate. The pigs slowly became just like Jones throughout the book. They even broke their own thought up commandments and changed them. They believed they were more important than all the rest of the animals on Animal Farm. Napoleon became the leader and worked ...
A few years after Orwell’s death, “Animal Farm” was made into a cartoon. Although the film was a success, it was criticised for reversing Orwell’s ending by having the other animals rise up against their pig masters. During the Cold War, an implied prediction that Soviet Communism would ultimately be overthrown was obviously a popular message in the West. So who was right, Orwell or the film-makers? In a way, both were. As far as post-Stalin Russia was concerned, the film-makers appear to have got it right. The Soviet Union and its satellites never re-introduced Western-style capitalism, but remained collectivist oligarchies until the system collapsed in the late eighties and early nineties. As for the other Communist superpower, however, Orwell’s prediction was spot-on, even though Mao’s regime did not exist when “Animal Farm” was written. In recent years China has transformed itself from a Marxist dictatorship into a capitalist one without a revolution or even a change in the name of the ruling party.
Orwell himself described the book as “a fairy story”. It is very brief, a novella rather than a novel, and is told in a deceptively simple style. It can, in fact, be enjoyed by children who know little or nothing about Russian history, but it is clearly more than a children’s story about animals. It is, in fact, in my view, the most devastating piece of political satire in twentieth-century English literature. By showing that even the most brutal dictatorships have something ridiculous about their pretensions, Orwell did for Stalin what Charlie Chaplin did for Hitler. Since “Animal Farm” it has no longer been possible to see Stalin as a heroic revolutionary leader, or even as a grandiose figure of heroic evil, like Milton’s Satan. He was simply the biggest pig in the barnyard.
