Marco Ortiz

Claim: Napoleon becomes the leader of the animals after Old Major passes away, but he quickly abuses his
power and becomes corrupt.
"Napoleon." Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia Of Literature (1995): N.PAG. Literary Reference Center. Web.
22 Feb. 2016.
No Page Napoleon Fictional character, a pig who usurps power and becomes dictator over the other animals in
Animal Farm.
"Notes & Comments: September 2015." New Criterion 34.1 (2015): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22
Feb. 2016.
Page 1-2 Let us leave our own situation to one side and recall a detail from George Orwell's novel Animal
Farm. After the revolution, the ringleaders, the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, had seven commandments
inscribed on the wall of the big barn, beginning with
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend and ending with
7. All animals are equal.
Page 2 As the years passed, however, many things changed at Animal Farm. A couple of the more pacific
animals noticed that the pigs had taken to walking on their hind legs and that those who were supervising the
work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters.
Page 2 It was at about that time that the seven commandments mysteriously disappeared and were replaced with
just one: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Rodden, John. "Appreciating Animal Farm In The New Millennium." Modern Age 45.1 (2003): 67. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
Page 72 For instance, the pigs represent the Communist Party. The pig leader Napoleon and his rival Snowball
symbolize the dictator Stalin and the Communist leader Leon Trotsky.
Page 72 Napoleon blames on his pig rival, Snowball, symbolizes the failure of the first Five-Year Plan, an
industrial plan to coordinate the Soviet economy in the 1920s that did not bring prosperity.
Page 73 For instance, by the conclusion of Animal Farm, some of the pigs are walking upright and wearing
human clothes: they are little different from corrupt human beings.
Page 75 Among them are the following: power corrupts; revolutions tend to come full circle and devour their
peoples; and even good, decent people not only hunger for power, but also worship powerful leaders.
Animal Farm will continue, therefore, to serve as an aid to grasping twentieth century history, both Russian and
Western, and for understanding biographical and political issues related to the nature of socialism, the Russian
Revolution, Marxist theory, and the abuse of language.
Page 69 For instance, during Snowball and Napoleon's argument about building a windmill, Orwell does not
include Napoleon urinating on the plans and Snowball saying, "You pig."

Page 69 For instance, Stalin's purges and show trials during 1936-1938 are justified by the pigs as a violation of
the "Crimes Against Animalism" code, an obvious allusion to the "crimes against the People" statutes of Stalinera Communist regimes.
Page 69 Another successful decision was to move the story's time line into the mid-1950s (Orwell ends the
allegory with the1943 Teheran Conference), which makes it possible to put a television in the barn, where it
becomes a powerful propaganda device. Used by the pigs to distract the other animals, who instantly become
mesmerized by its black-and-white images of pretty actresses and modern appliances, television is a more
powerful opiate of the people than Marx ever dreamed of.
Page 69 Director John Stephenson uses vintage black-and-white newsreel footage as an example of the pigs'
propaganda films. Drugged by TV. The rank-and file animals are content to follow the Seven Commandments
of Animalism painted on the barn by Squealer (the pig who symbolizes Pravda and the Soviet news agency
TASS).
Peters, Michael. "`Animal Farm' Fifty Years On." Contemporary Review 267.1555 (1995): 90. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
No Page When the Windmill is attacked Napoleon stays standing, instead of dropping to the ground, as a tribute
to Stalin's courage in remaining in Moscow during Hitler's advance; even to his enemies Orwell is determined
to be fair.
No Page Picking out as central the moment when the pigs keep apples and milk for themselves, he makes the
point that if 'the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then it would have been all right'.
Major's dream could have been realized. The masses should be 'alert', ready to 'chuck out their leaders as soon
as they have done their job'. This is rather a different message than that found in the anti-Communist
propaganda which so frequently surrounded, and surrounds, the novel.
Kearney, Anthony. "Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984." Explicator 54.4 (1996): 238. Literary Reference Center.
Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Page 238 The famous slogan in Animal Farm, "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others,"[1]
is more ambiguous than it has usually been taken to be. The slogan has invariably been read as meaning that
some animals (the pigs) are more equal (are better) than others. If being equal is a good thing, then the more
equal you are the better. This is what we might call the obvious meaning of the slogan, a meaning authorized by
popular usage over half a century and so deeply embedded in everyone's mind that advertisers, among others,
can use it to trigger our desire to be better than everyone else.
Page 238 In this reading the pigs want less equality, not more; being "more equal" means that you belong to the
common herd, not the elite. In the end this may lead to much the same conclusion as in the popular reading of
the slogan--the pigs in both readings are marking themselves off from the other animals--but what is at issue
here is the way equality is being defined, by the pigs and of course by Orwell himself. In the obvious reading of
the slogan, equality is a desirable state of affairs, with the pigs claiming more of it for themselves; in the second
reading it is distinctly undesirable, and the pigs want nothing to do with it. Lower animals are equal, the higher
ones decidedly unequal.
Byrne, Katharine. "Not All Books Are Created Equal." Commonweal 123.10 (1996): 14. Literary Reference
Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Page 14 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. (The wily pigs explain that they really don't like the milk that they refuse to
share with the other animals; they drink it only to keep up their strength so that they can pursue the welfare of
all.)

Page 16 John Halas and Joy Batchelor, in their animated cartoon film of the book (1954), apparently could not
bear this ending. 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."
Page 16 The hard-working wretches of the world contribute to their own fate in their ignorant loyalty and
apathy. In the book, the huge cart-horse, Boxer, a faithful, unquestioning worker ("I will get up earlier; I will
work harder. Napoleon is always right") is sent to the knackers as soon as his usefulness is over. As he is carried
off to his death, the weak protest of his hooves against the side of the van sounds the dying hope of the animals
betrayed. The tendency of power to corrupt must always be recognized; people's hold over their own fate must
prevail: an alert, informed, and wary electorate.
Page 16 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.
Page 16 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.
Caute, David. "Age Of Extremes." New Statesman 139.5007 (2010): 40-41. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23
Feb. 2016.
Page 40 Orwell produced a punishing pair of dystopias: Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four(1949).
The implicit message of the former is that the one salient factor in human nature overlooked by Karl Marx is the
innate lust for power.
Drabble, Margaret. "A Beastly Century." American Scholar 70.1 (2001): 160. Literary Reference Center. Web.
23 Feb. 2016.
Page 160 Though beastly was his first recorded word, George Orwell found animals pleasanter than people. In
1984 he demonstrates that we may all be reduced to the lowest of acts: we become worse than rats. The gene is
selfish, and the individual man is selfish. We are all potential torturers, and we would all betray our loved ones.
"Snowball." Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia Of Literature (1995): N.PAG. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23
Feb. 2016.
No Page After the farm animals revolt and drive the farmer and his family off the land, Snowball organizes the
animals into committees and tries to educate them in self-government. The farmer attempts to recapture his farm
but is repulsed by animals led by Snowball, whom the animals decorate as Animal Hero, First Class. Under
Snowball's leadership, the animals build a windmill for electric power. He is overthrown and expelled in a coup
mounted by Napoleon, a pig who becomes absolute dictator of the animals.
Pearson, John. "George Orwell." George Orwell (2005): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page In his famous novels of the 1940s, "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four," British author George
Orwell lashed out against British imperialism, fascism, and Soviet-style communism. His keen observations of
the use of language to corrupt political dialog popularized the concept of "doublespeak," shining a harsh light
on the use of modern media as a tool for propaganda or thought control.
No Page Orwell's next book, the satirical allegory "Animal Farm" (1945), took direct aim at Stalins takeover of
the fledgling Soviet Union in the 1920s. Approximately 160 pages long, the book at first glance looks and reads

like a childs fable. But soon after the animals take control of Manor Farm from their human owner, espousing
high ideals for a more fair and just life, their leader, a pig named Napoleon (standing in for Stalin) is corrupted
by power. He drives out his rival Snowball (as Stalin exiled Trotsky), and eventually makes a pact with the
farmer to again enslave the animals. Revolutionary commandments for animal equality are edited to justify the
pigs luxury and comfort at the expense of the other animals.
Newsinger, John. "Reviews." Europe-Asia Studies 48.7 (n.d.): 1264. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb.
2016.
No Page Orwell might have considered himself a socialist, the argument goes, but because of his background,
his theoretical inadequacies, his political inconsistencies, his pessimism, the books were, in fact, reactionary.
Does Animal Farm, for example, argue that revolutions always fail, always end in betrayal? Does it show the
working class as stupid, incapable of self-rule? Or is the book, as I would argue, a marvellous socialist protest
against Stalinism, written by someone who can quite legitimately be described as a 'literary Trotskyist'?
No Page There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Orwell's sympathies are with the working class (the farm
animals) in their revolutionary overthrow of Farmer Jones and establishment of a workers' state (Animal Farm).
What follows is the story of the betrayal of the Russian Revolution and rise of Stalinism, of a new privileged
class, told as fable. The chosen form of the novel inevitably involves simplification but the extent to which this
compromises its socialist politics is most debatable.
No Page His portrayal of the farm animals as so easily fooled by Napoleon and the pigs is the book's weakest
spot; indeed, in much of Orwell's writing he stumbles over the question of working-class consciousness.
Nevertheless, despite this important weakness, the two crucial elements of the book are its support for the
overthrow of Farmer Jones and its indictment of the revolution's betrayal by the pigs. Once again it has to be
emphasized that as far as Orwell was concerned the pigs had become as bad as, indistinguishable from, not
worse as, the humans. The famous last scene where the farm animals look in through the window and can no
longer tell them apart was a satire of the Tehran Conference involving Stalin and his Western Allies.
No Page Interestingly enough, the Halas & Batchelor cartoon film of the book that appeared in 1955 ends with
the donkey, Benjamin, leading a new revolution of the animals to overthrow Napoleon and the pigs. The
following year, of course, this was actually to happen in Hungary.
No Page When Orwell wrote the book, cooperation between Russia and the West was still the order of the day
but this was quickly to break down into the Cold War. The assertion that the Russian ruling class (the pigs) were
as bad as the Western ruling classes (the humans) was perverted into an attack on the Soviet Union on behalf of
the Western Powers.
"George Orwell Fights The Power." Scholastic Scope 48.1 (n.d.): 12. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb.
2016.
No Page Marx's ideas led to a revolution in Russia. In 1917, the Russian workers violently overthrew their royal
family, and created a communist state. Rule with an iron fist. But power soon fell into the wrong hands. Joseph
Stalin, a communist leader, ruled Russia with an iron fist from 1933 until his death in 1953. He cared more
about his power than he did about human life. Back in England, Orwell read about the events and realized
communism wasn't leading to equality for all. During Stalin's reign, 12 million Russians lost their lives. Many
were murdered by government forces; many died from starvation and overwork. Stalin's government treated
workers just as baldly as the royal family had. Sound like Animal Farm? Orwell wrote Animal Farm as an
allegory to describe, in disguise, Stalin's cruelty. In an allegory, symbolic figures represent real ones. For
example, the pig Napoleon shares Stalin's traits. Old Major stands for the philosopher Karl Marx. Published in
1945, Animal Farm did not bring down the communist government in Russia. But it showed people how easily
any government can end up abusing its power.