Essay on Animal Farm by George Orwell

English B Lea Mejdahl Nielsen Essay on “Animal Farm”

Essay on “Animal Farm” by George Orwell (1945)

During World War II, George Orwell, pen name of Eric Blair, wrote the novel “Animal Farm”. The novel was a critique of how the Communist party was leading the Soviet Union, and it is possible that the fact, that the Soviets were allied with England to fight a common enemy, was the reason why the publication of the book was postponed until after the war. The novel intends, besides being a fictional political satire, to show that the Soviet Union not was a true Socialist Country as many believed. Furthermore the novel brings together important themes such as politics, revolution, truth and first of all, class conflict.

The angle of this essay will be to interpret and find the similarities between characters of the Russian revolution and the most important characters in the fiction of the book. Furthermore, I will seek to explain Orwell’s intentions with using the fable and allegory as the primary genres in his novel.

“Animal Farm” takes place on an old-fashioned farm in England about the time where the book was written (middle 1940’s). The novel takes its beginning when Old Major, the oldest and cleverest pig on the farm, enlightens the other animal of a dream he have had. Old Major is the first character we meet, and this philosopher of changes is an obvious metaphor for Karl Marx, the founder of the ideology socialism. Old Major foresees a solution to the animal’s desperate living conditions under the “government” of Mr. Jones, their evil farmer (who has a slightly similarity to the Russian Tsar, Nicolas II), when he inspires the animals to rebel. Old Majors contempt for mankind is clearly expressed in his speech when he says, “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving and the rest he keeps for himself”. The actual time of when the revolt is going to happen is unsaid, it could be the next day or several generations away, but Old Major’s philosophy becomes an ideal. He dies shortly after, but the rebellion he has predicted succeeds.

The new leadership falls upon the pigs, which are considered the smartest animals on the farm. In the beginning there are two leaders, Snowball and Napoleon, and a power struggle is inevitable. Funny enough are Napoleon and Snowball never mentioned during Old Majors speech. This might indicate that the ideals Old Major proclaimed not even had been considered before the speech, and that the pigs sponge on Old Major’s inspiration and then used it to benefit themselves, instead of pursuing Old Major’s honest proposal.

Snowball and Napoleon are both clever animals, but Snowball becomes more popular than ...

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Snowball and Napoleon are both clever animals, but Snowball becomes more popular than Napoleon because of his highly evolved speech skills, in which he uses several rhetorical tricks. Napoleon is very big, but also very charismatic. He is not a good speaker, but he is master at asserting himself. Snowball is, on the other hand, a great speaker and organizer. When Snowball comes up with the idea to build a windmill to produce electricity to the farm, it comes to an election. As Napoleon realizes that he is loosing the election he sends his nine strong dogs, which he has raised in secrecy, on Snowball. The dogs drive Snowball of the farm and Napoleon is never elected to be the leader, but quickly transforms into a dictator.

The animals work out the theory of “Animalism” – and ideology meant to suit every animal in their fight for equal rights and against mankind. As time goes, Napoleon begins to break these seven commandments, and they become abridged at last simply reading: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”. This announcement clearly states Napoleons position as the top raging animal, whose rights goes beyond the rest.

So Napoleon is clearly the leading villain in the novel. The name Napoleon was also the name of a French dictator, and Napoleon becomes as well the central character of the Novel, and thereby an obvious metaphor for Joseph Stalin, the ruthless dictator of Russia. Napoleon is quickly overcome by greed and hunger for power. The true side of Napoleon becomes obvious at the slaughter of the animals accused of plotting against Napoleon: "(...) the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones." As greed grows Napoleon forgets equality and the thought of socialism. He gives himself all the power and ends up living in luxury while the common worker lives on the border of starvation.

The character Snowball has a clear likeness with Leo Trotsky, the archrival of Joseph Stalin and a great general of the red army. He led the red army into great victories against the army of the Russian Tsar. In the novel Trotsky’s role as a victorious hero is expressed in The Battle of the Cowshed, where Snowball leads the other animals to victory against Mr. Jones and his companions. Trotsky was destined to be Lenin’s successor, but after Lenin’s death there was a power struggle between Trotsky and Stalin and Trotsky was deported to east Siberia. The parallel between Trotsky and Snowball is, in that way, enormous. Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico in 1940 and in continuation of this; it is my guess that the gunshot the hens hear under the gale is the execution of Snowball. Snowballs way with words may be the reason for Napoleon to banish him. The expulsion of Snowball could seem spontaneous, but taking the puppies away from their mother, was just an early step in staging the expulsion of a rival.

As Napoleons dictatorship grows, the working animals becomes more frustrated from day to day, having no possibilities for expressing themselves, since they always have been told, that the animals are less intellectual than the pigs, and that what the pigs (Napoleon) dictate, must be followed, since it is them who possess the greatest knowledge. The central character of the working animals is Boxer, a big and strong horse, whose beliefs and willpower gives the other animals a glimpse of sincerity – and hope – during the though years of Napoleons dictatorship.

Boxer’s character is a symbol of the proletariat in Soviet under the revolution. He represents the indispensable Russian workingman, without whom the dictators would not be able of surviving in the comfort of manner, which they’ve become accustomed to, and in which they intend to stay.

Napoleons right-hand assistant, Squealer serves as the mouthpiece for Napoleons restructurings and there is a likeness between him and Bukharin, the editor of the Russian propaganda newspaper, Pravda. Squealer manipulates with the animals and he is the primary source of information and therefore the animals only get the information that Napoleon wishes them to get. When the pigs learn themselves to walk on their hind legs, Squealer takes the Sheep’s out in a field and makes them say: “Two legs good, four legs better”, and the propaganda has again served its purpose. The humans are furthermore representatives of the capital world, they represent all that the pigs fear and every time the common animal has doubtful thoughts of their leader, Squealer remind them of the terrible lives they lived with Jones as their tormentor.

I believe that Orwell has got more reasons for expressing his skepticism towards the Soviet regime in this indirect way he does, using metaphors and symbolism for almost every character. First of all, it is possible that Orwell simply did not want to criticize Stalin and his regime in an academic way. At the time when the novel was written, there were hundreds of books that were directly condemning the Communist in the Soviet Union and the idea of socialism itself, without using any symbols or metaphors. Most of these books were written by capitalist, who hated socialism in any way and just wanted to use the Soviet Union as an example of what horrible society socialism leads to.

As Orwell was a socialist himself, he did not want to join the capitalists direct and very one-sided critique of socialism, as Orwell meant that the inhuman conditions in the Soviet Union had nothing to do with socialism, but that is was just a result of corrupt leadership. By reducing the masses to single animals (e.g. the loyal Russian workers are symbolized by Boxer) Orwell was able to express the thoughts of millions of people in only one mind. In this way, “Animal Farm” becomes the represent of a universe in miniature. Orwell wanted to speak in a language that everyone understood, just like Snowball does in novel. Being able to express the thought of the people in the Soviet Union, under cover of animals, Orwell is also able to show how people are willing to work under the most outrageously conditions and to point out how fare the situation in Russia has evolve.

When it is considered how many million people was killed because of the revolution and Stalin’s insensitive regime and how many innocent people was forced to admit to be guilty in crimes they did not commit, these happenings could easily be drawn to the events in “Animal Farm”. Through the donkey Benjamin, Orwell manage to send out a lot of criticism on how the well educated higher classes did not intervene as the pigs take more and more of the power, e.g.: "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."

The reason why Orwell has chosen to use animals instead of humans is perhaps also because it is easy for us to see the ridicules in things pigs do (since they often are considered as lazy, unintelligent animal), and when this is realized, that what the pigs do in the story is what the humans did in real life, it is clearly to see how wrong these acts actually are. So George Orwell has written “Animal Farm”, a dystopia, where the loyal and sincere workers are being suppressed, because of a ruling dictator’s greed for power. The events in “Animal Farm” could in some way seem idyllic, but it is important to look at how these events possible could be metaphors or allegories of something complete else.

Orwell’s purpose and moral with the novel was perhaps to show how any change is not always for the better, that greed always will overcome us, the leading race of all animals. But perhaps he also wanted to show how hard it is to embrace every contrast inside us, how easily it is to be tempted to do things that serve for oneself but not for anybody else and that we, when we overcome this, finally are able to find our true meaning and place in the world.

My primary sources of information have been borrowed from: