The authors both wrote their stories to tell us a moral message. In Golding’s “Lord of the flies”, Ralph asks Piggy “What makes things break up like they do?” The break down of society is at the centre of the story and Golding himself said “that the cause is nothing more than the inherent evil of man; no matter how well-intentioned he is, and no matter how reasonable a government he erects, man will never be able to permanently contain the beast within.” Some people said that Golding wanted to show what happens when there is not enough law and order. But Golding himself said that he deliberately made the boys too young to have sex as an issue and chose not to make their problems with survival the main message. One class of boy did not exploit another, the break down was caused by the basic cruelty of some of the boys. So even the plot of “Lord of the flies” uses symbolism to convey a message. The boys represent mankind as a whole they show some good qualities and some bad. The two leaders Jack and Ralph begin to fight each other. “Things are breaking up” Ralph says, “I don’t understand why. We began well; we were happy.” The fact that Jack and Ralph meant to be good makes their finally slipping into such cruel and violent ending even more dramatic.
Golding in fact is drawing a symbolic picture of the causes of war, in particular World War II. The novel presents the War in the “Grownup world”, as a tragedy and a break down of society like the one on the island. Piggy is portrayed as a reasonable and gentle person he remarked that “Grownups know things…They’d meet and have tea and discuss. Then things ‘ud be all right” Piggy is used by Golding to represent the diplomat whose efforts do not succeed. Grownups do not solve any problems in the story, their presence is also symbolic. The parachutist whose corpse is discovered by the boys is the result of a horrible War. Similarly the officer who interrupts a manhunt to rescue the boys in a cruiser is no true hero, he is part of the war and there are parallels drawn between Jack’s weapon of authority, his sharpened stick and the revolver and the uniform of the officer. So grown up law and order does not in Golding’s eyes stop evil from happening, and the final words of the officer to Ralph “what have you been doing having a War or something” is very ironic.
Symbolism in “Animal Farm” is also used to discuss the causes of War, in this case the Russian revolution. Orwell associates real characters with the characters of the book. Mr. Jones is one of Orwell’s chief villains on “Animal Farm”. Mr. Jones symbolises (in addition to the evils of capitalism) Czar Nicholas II, the leader before Stalin (Napoleon). Jones represents the old government, the last of the Czars. Orwell suggests that Jones (Czar Nicholas II) was losing his “edge”. So Old Major reveals his feelings about his administration 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.” Old Major is the first dominant character described by Orwell in “Animal Farm”. This “pure-bred” of pigs is the kind, grand fatherly philosopher of change, an obvious metaphor for Karl Marx. Old Major offers a solution to the animals under the desperate plight of Jones’ “administration” when he inspires a rebellion of sorts among the animals. However, Old Majors philosophy is only an ideal. After his death, three days after the barnyard speech, the socialism he professes is drastically altered when Napoleon and the other pigs dominate. It almost seems as if the pigs fed off Old Major’s inspiration and then used it to benefit themselves.
Napoleon is Orwell’s other chief villain in “Animal Farm”. His name is very significant since Napoleon, the dictator of France, was thought by many to be the Anti-Christ. Napoleon is the central character on the farm. Obviously a metaphor for Stalin, Comrade Napoleon represents the human frailties of any revolution. At the end of the book Napoleon does not even pretend to lead a socialist state. He quickly becomes more or less a dictator who of course has never been elected by the animals. Squealer is an intriguing character, he is first described as a manipulator and persuader. Orwell narrates, “he could turn black into white.” Squealer could also be correlated with the Pravda, the Russian newspaper of the 1930’s. Squealer like the newspaper, are Napoleons link between himself and the other animals. Snowball is described as a pig very similar to Napoleon. Both pigs wanted a leadership position in the “new” economic and political system. Orwell states that “Napoleon and Snowball disagree at every point disagreement was possible.” Therefore, Napoleon decides Snowball must be eliminated. The parallels between snowball and Trotsky are uncanny. Trotsky too, was exiled, not from a farm, but from Mexico, where he spoke out against Stalin (Napoleon).
Orwell cleverly uses Boxer’s name as a metaphor for the Boxer rebellion in China in the early twentieth century. It was the rebellion, which signalled the beginning of communism in red China. Orwell narrates that “Napoleon’s most faithful disciples were the two carthorses, Boxer and Clover. Those two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but once having accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.”
Orwell uses the pigs in the book to surround Napoleon. They symbolise the communist party loyalists and the friends of Stalin, as well as the Russian parliament. The pigs, unlike other animals, live in luxury and enjoy the benefits of the society they help to control. Toward the end of the book, Orwell emphasises, “Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves richer, except, of course, the pigs and the dogs.” The dogs were used in the book to represent the KGB or perhaps more accurately Napoleon’s (Stalin’s) bodyguards. The dogs are the arch-defenders of Napoleon and the pigs. Orwell narrates “Silent and terrified, the animals crept back into the barn. In a moment the dogs came bounding back. At first no one had been able to imagine where these creatures came from, but the problem was soon solved: they were the puppies whom Napoleon had taken away from their mothers and reared privately.”
Mollie is one of the animals who is most opposed to the new government under Napoleon. She characterises the typical middle-class skilled worker who suffers from this new communism concept. Moses is perhaps Orwell's most intriguing character, a raven that would spy and be a talebearer for Napoleon. Muriel is the knowledgeable goat who reads the commandments for Clover. The rats and the rabbits are regarded as wild animals, somehow represent the socialist movement, the so-called “Menscheviki”. The pigeons symbolise Soviet propaganda, not to Russia but to other countries.
It is not only the animals that symbolise things in this book, the buildings also do. For instance the farm building stands for the Kremlin. The windmill stands for the Russian industry, that has been build up by the working-classes. All this tells us that Orwell had a very definite reason for his story. The use of animals to symbolise men act not only to interest the readers but adds humour to a serious political comment. They are rather like cartoon characters with very visible faults. Both books take a very strong message and illustrate it with great originality. Had the authors only written factual accounts of the political events very few people would have wanted to read them. Instead two fascinating stories which any reader would enjoy have been created. They can be read by younger children as simple stories but the older reader can understand the deeper message that is conveyed and hopefully learn from the mistakes of the pasts.
