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Makayla Moon

Claim: Napoleon attempts to conquer Animal Farm while Snowball is able to escape, Napoleon creates the
tyranny on his own.
Brockington, Jr., William S. "Animal Farm." Masterplots II: Juvenile & Young Adult Fiction Series (1991): 1-2.
Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
No Page: Animal Farm is an allegorical tale of dictatorships and human nature in the twentieth century.
No Page: Despite the slogan, the pigs gradually develop into a new ruling class, as their abilities of organizing
and controlling are recognized as superior by the others. With the death of Old Major, the leaders of this
rebellion are the idealistic Snowball and the pragmatic Napoleon. Before Snowball can become too successful,
the cynical Napoleon eliminates him as an opponent.
No Page: Napoleon uses his personal bodyguard of nine vicious dogs to attack Snowball, and Snowball barely
escapes from Animal Farm with his life. Napoleon then adopts Snowballs ideas, calling them his own. Through
distortion and propaganda, Snowball becomes the enemy. Napoleon becomes the dictator of Animal Farm.
Under Napoleon, the commune is no longer permitted to discuss or to debate; it must simply follow orders.
Squealer, the propagandist, constantly rewrites history to reflect new realities. The dogs enforce the orders of
the pig ruling class, which increasingly takes on the characteristics of the humans whom the animals have
overthrown.
No Page: The all-powerful Napoleon carries a whip, the symbol of human oppression, as his badge of authority.
Propaganda also makes Napoleon into the only hope for the animals in their fight against human outsiders.
No Page: The animals have been deceived, but because of their naivet, they have accepted their status. By the
end of Animal Farm, the pigs walk upright and are indistinguishable from humans. When neighboring farmers
visit Animal Farm to see the prosperity, they are amazed at the success. Sadly, only the pigs are prosperous, and
their prosperity has come at the expense of the other animals.
No Page: From the beginning, not all animals are equal, and the pigs quickly become the new rulers. Worse yet,
the pigs just as quickly subvert the revolution for their own benefit. Orwell demonstrates that the trusting naf
will soon become the pawn of those who are more equal than others. The Boxers of the world will always be the
dupes and pawns of the Napoleons.
No Page: Orwells second major theme is his fear of the all-powerful state with its expedient life. In Animal
Farm, Napoleon is certainly the most equal of all. He is cynical, brutal, and above all pragmatic. Once in power,
he will do whatever is necessary to keep his position.
No Page: The propaganda and lies, the whip, and the vicious dogs are all part of the corruption of the dream.
Ultimately, the animals have even less than before; and the new ruling class looks and acts like Mr. Jones and
his men.
No Page: Orwell, a socialist, had spent most of his life describing human misery and decrying the dictatorships
that had flourished during this turbulent era.
No Page: Snowball represented Leon Trotsky; Napoleon, Joseph Stalin; the dogs, the secret police; Squealer,
the expedient lie; and Boxer, the loyal worker. Just as the Russian Revolution had broken out spontaneously
with the result of hunger and suffering during World War I, so did the Rebellion on Manor Farm. Sadly, the new
Soviet state/Animal Farm that began as a dream quickly became, in the hands of evil men like Stalin/Napoleon,
repressive and brutal. To Orwell, the totalitarianism of the Communists was no better than the absolutism of the
czars.

Franks, Carol. "Animal Farm." MagillS Survey Of World Literature, Revised Edition (2009): 1-2. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
No Page: George Orwell says of Animal Farm, a novel subtitled A Fairy Story, that it was the first book in
which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose
into one whole.
No Page: In this power struggle, essentially between the two young boars Snowball and Napoleon, one sees at
first a sort of idealism, especially in Snowball, who speaks of a system that sounds much like Orwells
particular vision of democratic Socialism.
No Page: Gradually, the pigs begin claiming the privileges of an elite ruling class. They eat better than the other
animals, they work less, and they claim more political privileges in making major decisions. The outcome of the
power struggle between Snowball and Napoleon is that Napoleon and his trained dogs drive Snowball into
hiding.
No Page: Napoleon, now the totalitarian ruler of Animal Farm, rewrites history, convincing the other animals
that Snowball was really the cause of all their problems and that he, Napoleon, is the solution to them.
No Page: The sheep bleat foolish slogans on Napoleons behalf. Napoleons emissary, Squealer, a persuasive
political speaker, convinces the increasingly oppressed animals that nothing has changed, that the
commandments are as they always were, that history remains as it always was, that they are not doing more
work and reaping fewer benefits.
No Page: Though Animal Farm is antitotalitarian, it cannot really be called prodemocracy Socialism, except in
the sense of a warning, because the animals have no choice; the course of their fate appears inevitable.
No Page: Even if they had been given a choice, little in the novel indicates that it would have mattered. The
final image in the novel is of the oppressed creatures outside the house looking through the window at the
pigs and men fighting over a card game. They looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to
man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
May, Charles E. "Animal Farm." Masterplots II: British & Commonwealth Fiction Series (1987): 1-3. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
No Page: Because Animal Farm is a thoroughgoing allegory, either specifically of the Russian Revolution and
its aftermath or, more generally, of the dangers of any political revolution, it is two stories at once: the surface
plot story of the events leading up to and following the revolt of a group of farm animals against their human
oppressor, and the underlying conceptual story of political revolution for which the surface story stands.
No Page: The surface story begins almost immediately with the beast fable convention that animals can think,
talk, and feel, as the animals gather together to hear the dream of revolution by the old pig, Major. After Major
reminds the animals of their oppressed life, he incites them to revolution by telling them that all the evils they
experience spring from man, the only creature that consumes without producing. Shortly after laying down the
rules of what he proposes to be a new order, old Major dies peacefully in his sleep.
No Page: The pigs, the cleverest of the animals on the farm, develop Majors teachings into a coherent system
which they call Animalism and which they secretly teach to the rest of the animals in preparation for the
revolution which the Major has foretold. Rather than as the result of a conscious and prearranged effort, the
rebellion, when it comes a few months later, develops as a result of hunger and neglect caused by Mr. Jones.

No Page: Immediately thereafter, in a series of acts of comradeship, the animals change the name of the farm
from Manor Farm to Animal Farm and list Seven Commandments on the barn wall, which the pigs have
developed from the teachings of old Major. Basically, the Commandments suggest that whatever is human is an
enemy, that whatever is animal is a friend, and that all animals are equal. The first indication that all are not
equal, however, occurs when the pigs set themselves up as the leaders and take for themselves the milk usually
mixed with the animals mash.
No Page: Snowball is at first the leader in organizing them into various committees and in attempting to educate
them, while Squealer is the mouthpiece who, by means of fancy doubletalk, convinces the animals that the pigs
deserve certain special privileges.
No Page: the animals rebuff their enemies, decorate Snowball as Animal Hero, First Class, and commemorate
the event as the Battle of the Cowshed. Soon afterward, Snowball develops his most ambitious plan: the
building of a windmill so that the animals can have electrical power. It is the issue of the windmill which leads
Napoleon to mount a coup, with the help of several fierce dogs he has trained in secret, against Snowball. When
Snowball is expelled, Napoleon begins his takeover as absolute dictator, beginning with the banning of debate
and continuing with the increasing assumption of special privileges for the pigs.
No Page: The most insidious part of Napoleons campaign for gaining complete power is his manipulation of
the past. With the help of the rhetoric of Squealer and the fierceness of the dogs, he convinces the animals that
past events are not as they remember them for example, that Snowballs part in the Battle of the Cowshed
was exaggerated, that Napoleon had never really opposed the windmill, and that in fact Snowball was a traitor.
Furthermore, under Napoleons regime, the original Seven Commandments are gradually altered and reduced to
suit the specific desires of the ruling pigs.
No Page: Any attempt to disobey Napoleon is met with violent retaliation; some animals, in an act of mass
hallucination, even admit that they are responsible for working with the phantom Snowball and are promptly
slaughtered by Napoleons fierce dogs.
No Page: At the end of the novel, the original Seven Commandments have been reduced to one, All animals
are equal, but some animals are more equal than others, and when the pigs meet with several human farmers to
work out a trade agreement, the other animals who look in at their meeting cannot really tell the difference
between the men and the pigs.
No page: By necessity, in allegory characters are two-dimensional figures who are created to serve the purposes
of the underlying conceptual framework. Because they must have a one-to-one relationship with the thematic
targets of the satiric thrust of the work, they cannot possess the complexity of real people in the real world.
No Page: Most critics agree that Major is the chief theoretician of socialism, Karl Marx
No Page: The animals thus are presented as illustrative of the utopian dream of socialism pitted against the vices
of capitalism represented by the humans in the story. Neither political ideology is presented in a favorable light,
but whereas the evils of capitalism are taken for granted, it is the futility of the socialist ideal on which the work
primarily focuses.
No Page: Animal Farm perhaps works best not as a specific allegory of the Russian Revolution but rather as a
fable about the basic nature of human beings, both in isolation and in groups, which militates against any
utopian ideal. What Orwell has seized upon is precisely those qualities of animals that humans share which
make such an ideal impossible

No Page: What is most demoniacally human about the pigs is their use of language not only to manipulate the
immediate behavior of the animals through propaganda, emotive language, and meaningless doubletalk but also
to manipulate history, and thus challenge the nature of actuality itself.
No Page: This manipulation, however, is only one primary means of the pigs control; another, equally
important, is the threat of brute force as manifested by Napoleons pack of vicious trained dogs. In the final
image of the allegory, the realization is that humans prove to be no better than animals, and animals prove to be
no better than humans.
No Page: The great ideal of the windmill, itself a Quixotic gesture of idealism, cannot be achieved because the
animals, like humans, are basically limited by their own natures, and because nature itself is blindly indifferent
to the aspirations of man. Orwells own pessimistic view in the work seems to be echoed by the cynical donkey,
Benjamin: Things never had been, nor ever could be much better or worse hunger, hardship, and
disappointment being . . . the unalterable law of life. The law of man is the law of the jungle after all; the truth
of power corrupts is the same as the truth of the fittest shall survive.
Meyers, Jeffrey, and Northrop Frye. "Chapter 10: ANIMAL FARM: Part 67: Northrop Frye, Canadian Forum."
George Orwell (0-415-15923-7) (1997): 206-208. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
Page 206: fable of the animals who revolted and set up a republic on a farm, how the pigs seized control and
how, led by a dictatorial boar named Napoleon, they finally became human beings walking on two legs and
carrying whips just as the old Farmer Jones had done.
Page 206: At each stage of this receding revolution one of the seven principles of the original rebellion becomes
corrupted, so that no animal shall kill any other animal has added to it the words without cause when there is
a great slaughter of the so-called sympathizers of an exiled pig named Snowball, and no animal shall sleep in a
bed takes on with sheets when the pigs move into the human farmhouse and monopolize its luxuries.
Page 206: The story is very well-written, especially the Snowball episode, which suggests that the Communist
Trotskyite is a conception on much the same mental plane as the Nazi Jew, and the vicious irony of the end
of Boxer the work horse is perhaps really great satire.
Page 206: On the other hand, the satire on the episode corresponding to the German invasion seems to me both
silly and heartless, and the final metamorphosis of pigs into humans at the end is a fantastic disruption of the
sober logic of the tale.
Page 207: Animal Farm adopts one of the classical formulas of satire, the corruption of principle by expediency
Page 207: co-operative communities attempted in America during the last century. But for the same reason it
completely misses the point as a satire on the Russian development of Marxism, and as expressing the
disillusionment which many men of goodwill feel about Russia.
Page 207: Marx and Engels worked out a revolutionary technique based on an analysis of history known as
dialectic materialism, which appeared in the nineteenth century at a time when metaphysical materialism was a
fashionable creed, but which Marx and Engels always insisted was a quite different thing from metaphysical
materialism.
Welsh, James M. "Animal Farm." MagillS Guide To Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature (1996): 1-2. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

No Page: This animal fable is a political allegory of the Russian Revolution. The allegory, as various critics
have demonstrated, has exact counterparts to the events and leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution, the October
Revolution, and the development of the Soviet Union into a dictatorship under the control of Joseph Stalin.
No Page: Meanwhile, the pigs reserve special privileges for themselves, such as consuming milk and apples that
are not shared with the others.
No Page: Thereafter, the animals work like slaves, with Napoleon as the tyrant in charge. Gradually the pigs
take on more human traits and move into the farmhouse. Before long, they begin sleeping in beds and
consuming alcohol.
No Page: Napoleon organizes a purge, sets his dogs on four dissenting pigs who question his command, and has
them bear false witness against the absent Snowball. He then has the dogs kill them, violating one of the Seven
Commandments, which are slyly emended to cover the contingencies of Napoleons rule and his desires for
creature comforts.
No Page: Napoleon organizes a counterrevolution with the help of his guard dogs (the state police or palace
guards, in terms of the allegory) and drives Snowball into exile (as happened with Trotsky), then plays one
neighbor, Frederick (Hitler), against the other, Pilkington (a Churchillian Tory), paralleling the events of World
War II.
No Page: Brutal tyrants driven by greed and ambition may lie and cheat to achieve their own selfish ends. The
novel is distinguished by its clarity of style and the apparent simplicity of its narration, which has made it a
classic that can be read on one level by younger readers for its story content and on other, more sophisticated
levels by those interested in its political thesis.
Letemendia, V.C. "Revolution On Animal Farm." Journal Of Modern Literature 18.1 (1992): 127. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Page 127: In the last scene of George Orwells fairy tale, Animal Farm, the humbler animals peer through a
window of the farmhouse to observe a horrible sight: the pigs who rule over the, have grown indistinguishable
from their temporary allies, the human farmers, whom they fought to overthrow.
Page 127: The one thing that never arrives is equality.
Page 127: Obviously Animal Farm was designed to parody the betrayal of Socialists ideals by the Soviet
regime.
Page 127: Yet is has also been interpreted by various readers as expressing Orwells own disillusion with any
form of revolutionary political change and, by others, as unfolding such meaning even without its authors
conscious intention.
Protherough, Robert. "George Orwell: Overview." Twentieth-Century Young Adult Writers. Ed. Laura Standley
Berger. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Twentieth-Century Writers Series. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23
Feb. 2016.
No Page: However, as the years pass, the pigs, cleverest of the animals, gradually assume more and more power
as a new elite under their leader Napoleon.
No Page: At the end, the farm reverts to its original title, Napoleon restores relationships with the human
farmers, and when the other creatures peep in the farmhouse windows they "looked from pig to man ... but
already it was impossible to say which was which."

No Page: Certainly this satirical fable about the nature of totalitarian societies was rooted in Orwell's
experiences in Spain and his awareness of Bolshevik methods, but it can be read too simply as an allegory of
the Russian revolution.
Cowper, Richard. "George Orwell: Overview." St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers. Ed. Jay P. Pederson.
4th ed. New York: St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page: From now on in any conflict between the individual human being and the State, Orwell was always to
be found on the side of the underdog. Orwell's international stature was first established with Animal Farm, a
classic Swiftian satire on the Soviet experiment.
Robb, Paul H. "Animal Farm: Overview." Reference Guide to English Literature. Ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed.
Chicago: St. James Press, 1991. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page: Most directly Animal Farm is an allegory of Stalinism, growing out of the Russian Revolution of
1917.
No Page: George Orwell's use of the fable form helps the reader go beyond the details of one revolution and
examine the elements of human nature which produce a Stalin and enable him to seize power.
No Page: It is simplistic, emotion-freighted exhortation, rousing the illiterate, simple, common animals. The
challenge catches fire and, as in all revolutions, the planning begins in euphoria and hope.
No Page: No voice is raised to ask pertinent questions or call for considered deliberation. Along with the
euphoria, idealism also possesses everyone. The appearance of rats at the meeting raises a question: ``Are rats
comrades?'' A democratic vote results in a ringing ``Yes!'' And Old Major proclaims, ``No animal must ever
tyrannize over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. All animals are equal!''
No Page: It was, however, generally recognized that the pigs were the cleverest of the animals, so the work of
organizing for the Rebellion fell naturally to them, especially to three who took over leadership: Napoleon and
Snowball, the two boars of the farm, and Squealer.
No Page: The Rebellion comes sooner than had been expected and the successful animals join together with a
will to build the New Jerusalem. And to symbolize the new day the name of the farm is changed from Manor
Farm to Animal Farm.
No Page: Very soon, however, under the leadership of Napoleon, the techniques and hypocricies of tyranny
begin to appear. First, there is a strong emphasis on ceremony and ritual. A regular Sunday morning meeting is
set up where Napoleon gives an inspirational address.
No Page: Slogans are recited in unison. A favorite is their great affirmation: ``Four legs goodtwo legs bad!''
When a counter-attack by farmer Jones is beaten off, the great occasion is proclaimed ``The Battle of the
Cowshed,'' and military decorations created including ``Animal Hero-First Class'' and ``Animal Hero-Second
Class.'' Napoleon awards both of these to himself.
No Page: Very soon comes the discrediting of co-leader Snowball. Snowball is the idealist, constantly wanting
to consider the welfare of all the animals while Napoleon is the pragmatist, ready to be brutal to achieve his
purposes. So the technique of the ``big lie'' and contrived evidence results in Snowball's being driven out of
Animal Farm, leaving Napoleon in sole command.
No Page: And the discredited Snowball is blamed whenever problems arise. Orwell is paralleling the conflict in
Russia between Trotsky and Stalin with Stalin the winner.

No Page: Another recognizable technique: revision of the past. The Seven Commandments``unalterable
law''are revised one by one to suit Napoleon's purposes.
No Page: The most blatant and most effective techniques used by Napoleon are the show trials, the abject
confessions, and the summary executions. Orwell does not include an explanation of this epidemic of
confessions, but a reasonable conclusion is that the rampant climate of Machiavellian fear paralyzes the
judgment, generates irrational guilt, and creates a kind of hysterical contagion of confession, in the hope that
this will earn safety.
No Page: Other techniques include optimistic reports that things are better than ever before; creation of a
Mystique of the Leader; discarding of even loyal supporters when they can no longer be useful. The sale of
Boxer to the glue factory when he is too ill to work anymore is a case in point.
No Page: Hypocrisies are numerous, for special privileges for the pigs are decreed and then justified through
Squealer's Doublespeak.
No Page: At the end of the novel the common animals realize what they have never been able to understand: the
pigs are the same as their human masters were.
No Page: Instead of gaining freedom they have only exchanged one set of masters for another.
No Page: The vision with which they began has been corrupted. They have experienced a kind of rite of passage
to sad knowledgeevents have come full circle and the common animals now know the irony of expectations.
No Page: Orwell's fable illuminates his satirical theme: man's vulnerability to man's greed for power. His
allegory is a clear statement verified by history.
Byrne, Katharine. "Not all books are created equal: Orwell & his animals at fifty." Commonweal 123.10 (1996):
14+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page: 'Animal Farm' is still relevant today because it teaches about the dangers of apathy and oppression.
During his life, Orwell became distressed when some conservatives tried to interpret it as an attack on
Communism, when it is really about the corrupting nature of all power.
No Page: The venerable boar, Old Major, is the philosopher of the revolution. His ringing words to the
clandestine assemblage of animals remind them that their lives are "miserable, laborious, and short," with no
share in the fruits of their labor. While ascribing all their troubles to "man," his speech ends with the warning:
"Above all, no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all
brothers. All animals are equal."
No Page: The barnyard is roused to revolution. Led by the pigs, the animals rout Jones and take possession;
"Jones's Manor" is now called "Animal Farm." Morale is high.
No Page: Victory is sweet for the liberated animals but also brief. At first they gambol in joy at the prospect of
living out their lives in dignity, sharing in the prosperity their labor produces. Each works hard to sustain the
revolution.
No Page: But then, inexorably, methodically, equality and freedom are stripped away as the pigs, under
Napoleon, a ruler as brutal as Jones was, develop a ruling elite that abrogates all privilege to itself at the
expense of the "lower" animals.
No Page: Lies and terror now rule "Animal Farm." In the ultimate reversal of Old Major's words, "all animals
are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." One form of repression has been replaced by
another.

No Page: In the end, the wretched animals are looking in the window at an economic summit between Men and
Pigs, "Looking from pig to man, and from man to pig they observe that there is no difference between them."
No Page: In their version of the book, "the animals, united, came on relentlessly" and a brick was thrown
through the window, "shattering Napoleon's magnificent portrait under the impact of yet another revolution."
Understandably, students like this version better than the original.
No Page: But as Orwell tells it, the fable ends with all the brave hopes in ruins. Virtue is crushed and
wickedness triumphs. What went wrong? Orwell lays out the story and asks us to look at it. He does not
moralize.
No Page: This is what happened, but we know it is not right. We are left morally indignant at the injustice
suffered. Are we to believe that this is the inevitable fate of rebellion? Or that other political systems are better
than Stalinist communism?
No Page: As to that, Orwell does not uphold the political systems of the West. The men who come to deal with
the ruling pigs, Pilkington from capitalist England and Frederick from Nazi Germany, commiserate with the
pigs: "You have your lower animals and we have our lower classes."
No Page: From his earliest years as a policeman for the British Empire in Burma--an "unsuitable career," he
called it--Orwell always spoke out against oppressors of the poor and helpless: returning to England he spoke
for the rights of tramps, hop-pickers, or coal miners.
No Page: A self-defined democratic Socialist, Orwell had a hard time with other members of the Left. An
episode in Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet describes the situation succinctly. Addressing a Columbia University
seminar, Mr. Sammler is attempting to defend Orwell's position, but he is interrupted by one of the bearded and
unwashed students with "Orwell was a counter-revolutionary shit, and you're an old shit too."
No Page: Orwell was distressed to find his Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four being used, especially in the
United States, as cold-war weapons, purportedly the work of a repentant Communist who saw the light and
wanted to warn the world of the inevitable fruits of revolution.
No Page: Orwell further explained, "Revolutions led by power-hungry people can only lead to a change of
masters....Revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out
their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job....You can't have a revolution unless you make it for your
self; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship."
No Page: Is Animal Farm out of date since the Soviet Socialist Republics, as constituted, have failed? Only if it
is read for the wrong reasons. The tale about independence won but lost continues to remind us that freedom is
fragile and precious. Power corrupts, and there are forces at work seeking to wield it.
No Page: Crick's answer sidestepped the questioner's effort to pull Orwell politically to the right or to the left
and put a tag on him. "If Orwell were alive today," Crick said, "he would be a very old man; he would probably
be counting the marbles in his head and hoping they were all there."
No Page: Indeed, if Orwell were alive and well and had all his marbles he would be fighting as he did all the
days of his brief life, writing against oppression and corruption wherever it exists, glad to know that the young
are still reading and learning from Animal Farm.
No Page: 'Animal Farm' is still relevant today because it teaches about the dangers of apathy and oppression.
During his life, Orwell became distressed when some conservatives tried to interpret it as an attack on
Communism, when it is really about the corrupting nature of all power.

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