Animal Farm Essay, Research Paper

PG. 1

Animal Farm

Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his psuedonym George Orwell, is an English

author commonly known to write about political issues. Orwell has been highly acclaimed

and criticized for his novels, including one of his most famous, Animal Farm. In a satirical

form, George Orwell uses personified farm animals to express his views on stalinism in the

novel Animal Farm.

Throughout Orwell’s early novels, democratic socialism kept the author from total

despair of all humans(Greenblatt 104). After his better experience in the Spanish Civil War

and the shock of the Nazi-Soviet pact, Orwell developed Animal Farm. The socialism

Orwell believed in was not a hardheaded “realistic” approach to society and polotics but a

rather sentimental, utopian vision of the world as a “raft sailing through space, with,

potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody”(Grennblatt 106).

Animal Farm is a satirical beast fable which has been heralded as Orwell’s lightest,

gayest work(Brander 126). It is a novel based on the first thirty years of the Soviet Union, a

real society pursuing the ideal of equality. His book argues that this kind of society has not

worked and could not (Meyers 102). Animal Farm has also been known as a an enter-

taining, witty tale of a farm whose oppressed animals, capable of speech and reason,

overcome a cruel master and set up a revolutionary government(Meyers 103). On another,

more serious level, it is a political allegory, a symbolic tale where all the events and

characters represent events and characters in Russian history since 1917(Meyers 103).

Orwell uses actual historical events to construct Animal Farm, but rearranges them

to fit his plot. Manor Farm is Russia, Mr. Jones the Tsar, the pigs the Bolsheviks who led the

revolution. The humans represent the ruling class, the animals the workers and the peasants.

Old Major, the inspiration of the rebellion, is a combination of Marx, the chief theorist and

Lenin, the actual leader(Meyers 105). Old Major dies before the rebellion just as Lenin did in

the Russian revolution. In actuality Stalin and Trotsky argue over power after Lenin’s death,

which Orwell satirizes in Napolean and Snowball.

In Animal Farm, Orwell immediately establishes the Soviet political allegory as Old

Major (Marx/Lenin) describes the exploitation of animals by humans and the statement “all

animals are comrades.” The animals continuous singing of “Beasts of England” can be seen

not only as a symbol of the decay of communist notions of a perfect state, but also as

Orwell’s more general comment on the decline of true liberty and equality in the west

(Gardner 99).

The progress of the revolution from a common idealism to a state system of leader,

police, and workers happens rather rapidly. The animals take over the farm and the pigs

( Bolsheviks ) emerge as natural organizers. The pigs rduce the principles of animalism in

seven simple commandments and develop a green and white version of the Russian hammer

and sickle flag. Instead, theirs has “a hoof and horn which signifies the future Republic of the

animals which would arise when the human race had been finally overthrown”(Orwell 89).

Orwell demonstrates both the greed and the hypocracy involved in the urge to power when

the clever pigs contribute to none of the work and keep for themselves all the milk and

apples.

During the novel, the pigs continue to gain more and more power. In the pigs uprise

of power, the Seven Commandments are an effective structural device. Their different

alterations resemble the pigs’ progressive rise to power. The pigs’ gradual acquisition of

priveleges- apples, milk, house, whisky, beer, clothes- leads to the final identification of pig

and human, Communist and capitalist(Gardner 101).

The blurring of the past and the hardening shape of the present, grim, greedy, or

just pragmatic, are accompanied by betrayal of the spirit of the revolution exemplified in the

ammendments made into the “Seven Commandments” of “Animalism”(Gardner 102).

Costantly these are changed by one of the deceiving pigs, Squealer. The puzzled animals

can not figure out with trying to keep pace with the pigs increasing authority. So the

commandments such as, “No animal shall sleep in a bed” becomes, when the pigs move into

the farmhouse, “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.” Also, after the savage killings

“No animal shall kill another” is modified by the addition of “without a cause.”

Each event that occurs in Animal Farm has a historical parallel(Meyers 106).

The Rebellion is the October 1917 Revolution, the Battle of the Cowshed is the subsequent

Civil War, Mr. Jones and the farmers represent the loyalist Russians, the hen’s revolt stands

for the brutally suppressed 1921 mutiny of the sailors, Napolean’s deal with Whymper

represents Russia’s 1922 Treaty of Rapallo with Germany(Meyers 106). The most

significant of all the events is the building of the windmill, which in Soviet terms represents

industrialization(Meyers 107). Orwell ends the novel with a satiric portrait of the Teheran

Conference of 1943, the meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin who are now allies

(Raymond).

Throughout the entire book, the pigs gradually gravitate towards the human world.

First, through trade and alliances with Mr.Frederick. The selling of timber to Mr. Frederick

of Pinchfield is the animal equivalent of the short-lived Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of

1939(Gardner 105). Then as the pigs celebrate the Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of the

Windmill, they drink alcohol. More and more has Napolean, now “elected” president,

become the remote object of a personality cult in a system marked by “readjustment” of

rations for workers and the empty “dignity of” more songs, more speeches, and more

processions(Gardner 105). Despite this, all the animals, except the pigs, still hope for days

before the Rebellion. They figured if they worked hard, at least, they worked for themselves.

“No creature among them went upon two legs”(Orwell 36). “No creature called another

creature ‘Master’”(Orwell 38). “All animals were equal”(Orwell 62).

Orwell finishes Animal Farm with a surprise ending. He demonstrates the pigs’

complete corruptness as they walk on their hind legs. The pigs train all the young sheep to

walk on their hind legs and chant “Four legs good, two legs better.” Orwell throws in irony

throughout the novel to show that not all the animals are fair and equal.

On the whole, Orwell’s intentions to discredit the Soviet system by showing its

inhumanity and its back-sliding from ideals is achieved. It is Orwell’s sharpness of

visualization and emotional resonance that have ensured Animal Farm what seems to be

a permanent place in literature(Gardner 107). Graham Greene rightly noted in his review that

we “become involved in the fate of the animals. We care about them too much merely to

translate events into their historical equivalent.” There is no such possibility in Animal Farm,

nor, by the end , can we escape the weight of the book’s sadness by thinking that these things

have only happened to animals(Gardner 107). We look from the oppressed animals in the

book to the oppressed human beings outside and back again, and can see no difference

(Gardner 107).Work Cited

DISCovering Authors, Gale Research Inc., 1993 .[computer]

Gardner, Averil. George Orwell. Boston, G.K. Hall and Co.: 1987.

Meyers, Valerie. Modern Novelists George Orwell. St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1991.

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1946.

Schorer, Mark. “An Indigent and Prophetic Novel.” The New York Times Book Review, 1949.

Williams, Raymond. George Orwell; A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey, Prentice- Hall, Inc.: 1974.

Woodcock, George. The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell. Little, Brownn, and Company, 1966.