Noel Southward

Claim: In the novel, the characters Napoleon and Squealer become the tyrants of the newly separated and very
Stalinist, Animal Farm.
"Notes & Comments: September 2015." New Criterion 34.1 (2015): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22
Feb. 2016.
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. 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. Orwell meant Animal Farm to be an allegory about Soviet Communism, an illustration of how
revolutionary enthusiasm regularly turns rancid and fosters new forms of tyranny.
Letemendia, V.C. "Revolution on Animal Farm." Journal of Modern Literature 18.1 (1992): 127. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 22 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 them have grown indistinguishable
from their temporary allies, the human farmers, who the originally fought to overthrow. The animals fate seems
to mirror rather closely that of the common people as Orwell envisages it some six years before commencing
Animal Farm.
"Napoleon." Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1995.
Literature Resource 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, by George Orwell.
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. 22 Feb. 2016.
No Page Hypocrisies are numerous, for special privileges for the pigs are decreed and then justified through
Squealer's Doublespeak. And revisions of the Seven Commandments are continually made to suit Napoleon's
personal wishes. The final cynical attitude of all tyrannies is expressed in the ultimate distillation of the Seven
Commandments into one: ``All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.''
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. Instead of gaining freedom they have only exchanged one set of
masters for another. 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.
Meyers, Jeffrey, and Cyril Connolly. "Chapter 10: ANIMAL FARM: Part 64: C.C. (Cyril Connolly), Horizon."
George Orwell (0-415-15923-7) (1997): 199-201. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Page 200 The allegory between the animals and the fate of their revolution (they drive out the human beings and
plan a Utopia entrusted to the leadership of the pigsNapoleon-Stalin, Snowball-Trotskywith the dogs as
police, the sheep as yes-men, the two carthorses, Boxer and Clover, as the noble hard-working proletariat), and
the Russian experiment is beautifully worked out, perhaps the most felicitous moment being when the animal
saboteurs are executed for some of the very crimes of the Russian trials, such as the sheep who confessed to
having urinated in the drinking pool or the goose which kept back six ears of corn and ate them in the night.

The fairy tale ends with the complete victory of Napoleon and the pigs, who rule Animal Farm with a worse
tyranny and a far greater efficiency than its late human owner, the dissolute Mr. Jones.
Sapakie, Polly. "Freud's Notion of the Uncanny In ANIMAL FARM." Explicator 69.1 (2011): 10-12. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Page 10 The link between the critics allowance for differing interpretations and attempted denial of truth in
Animal Farm intersects with Sigmund Freuds concept of the uncanny. The uncanny is undoubtedly related to
what is frighteningto what arouses dread and horror (Freud 619). It is produced when the distinction
between imagination and reality is effaced (636). Freuds uncanny is evident in Animal Farm, especially in the
novels closing scenes.
Page 11 Building on the unspoken fears of the animals, these pigs would be as men and carry the weapons of
man, including the whip that subjugates the animals by its very presence. The gradual development of the pigs
into what they had originally overthrown is by degrees, so the animals can ignore it for a time. However, by the
time four legs are good but two legs even better, it is hard to overlook the metamorphosis of the pigs into
something like humans, aping their predecessors in appearance as well as performance (Morse 88) in order to
preserve their tyranny.
Page 11 The pigs do more than talk, though, by manipulating the reality of Animal/Manor Farm to the degree
that the animals are confounded, sensing that what once was is now misshapen into an unrecognizable
incarnation of the initial rebellion. [T]he uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is
known of old and long familiar (Freud 620), yet it brings with it a new fear, as when the animals see Napoleon
walking as if he were Jones. The animals remember upright, unkind masters who carry cruel whips with them as
they swagger around the farm, now transformed into peacocking masters with cloven hooves, an ancient and
tangible evil indicative of the uncanny.
Page 12 No animal on the farm has any semblance of autonomy or free will after being forced to acknowledge
the illusory nature of the pigs collective identity in the novels closing scenes. The animals dream of a golden
future becomes an appalling nightmare, as unavoidable as it is acutely suggestive of Freuds uncanny.
Whalen-Bridge, John. "Animal Farm." Cyclopedia Of Literary Characters, Revised Third Edition (1998): 1.
Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page Napoleon, a young boar who ousts Snowball and assumes complete power over the other animals.
While Snowball is studying human science, Napoleon trains a litter of dogs to become his secret police force.
Napoleon corresponds to Joseph Stalin, who ousted Trotsky after the death of Lenin and who then led bloody
purges against possible and imagined dissenters.
Squealer, also a young boar. Squealer is the cleverest with language and is Napoleons propagandist and chief
misinformation officer. He is said to be able to turn black into white, meaning that he can convince most
animals of things that are patently false.
Meyers, Jeffrey, and Graham Greene. "Chapter 10: ANIMAL FARM: Part 62: Graham Greene, Evening
Standard." George Orwell (0-415-15923-7) (1997): 195-196. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Page 196 We do become involved in the fate of Molly the Cow, old Benjamin the Donkey, and Boxer the poor
devil of a hard-working, easily deceived Horse. Snowball is driven out by Napoleon, who imposes his solitary
leadership with the help of a gang of savage dogs, and slowly the Seven Commandments become altered or
erased, until at last on the barn door appears only one sentence. All animals are equal, but some animals are
more equal than others.
Page 196 As for the others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. They were generally
hungry, they slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they labored in the fields; in winter they were troubled by

the cold, and in summer by the flies. Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and
tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Joness expulsion was still recent, things had
been better or worse than now. They could not remember.
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 himself at the
expense of the lower animals.
Snowball." Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature (1995): N.PAG. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23
Feb. 2016.
No Page Snowball: Fictional character, a pig who is one of the leaders of the revolt in ANIMAL FARM, George
Orwell's allegorical tale about the early history of Soviet Russia. Most critics agree that Snowball represents
Leon Trotsky, the revolutionary leader who struggled against Joseph Stalin after the Russian Revolution and
lost.
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.
Overview: Animal Farm." Characters in 20th-Century Literature. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Detroit: Gale, 1990.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page Snowball assumes primary control of the collective and institutes various organizational and
educational reforms. However, when he presents an impressive plan for construction of a windmill to provide
electrical power, Napoleon, with the aid of dogs he has secretly trained, overthrows his fellow pig and assumes
absolute dictatorship. He rewrites the history of the animals so that Snowball is made a traitor and he also
revises the Commandments to support greater privileges for the pigs. Gradually the pigs come to resemble the
humans whom they once despised.
"Animal Farm." Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1995.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page The book concerns a group of barnyard animals who overthrow and chase off their exploitative human
masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the animals' intelligent and power-loving
leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution and form a dictatorship even more oppressive and heartless than that of
their former human masters.
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 The revolutionary ideals of equality are replaced by a new hierarchy, and the slogan "All animals are
equal" is extended by the clause, often quoted since, "but some animals are more equal than others." 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."

Times Literary Supplement. "Untitled." Times Literary Supplement (25 Aug. 1945): 401. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 68. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page Even more powerful than Napoleon is Squealer, Napoleon's publicity agent, who justifies every
reactionary decree by arguing that it is really in the animals' own interest and persuades them that to add to the
seventh commandment of the revolution, "All animals are equal," the rider "but some animals are more equal
than others," is not to tamper with the principle of equality. Dictatorship is evil, argues Mr. Orwell with a
pleasant blend of irony and logic while busily telling his fairy story, not only in that it corrupts the characters of
those who dictate, but in that it destroys the intelligence and understanding of those dictated to until there is no
truth anywhere and fear and bewilderment open the way for tyranny ferocious and undisguised.
Newsinger, John. "Reviews." Europe-Asia Studies 48.7 (n.d.): 1264. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb.
2016.
No Page As for the notion that Animal Farm suggests that all revolutions are doomed to betrayal, well Orwell
argued quite explicitly against that view elsewhere, condemning it as conservative. He certainly believed that all
revolutions 'fail' but only because utopia was unobtainable. This did not mean they were not worthwhile and
would not improve things, make the world better--though never perfect. Moreover, there is every reason to
believe that he would have welcomed the revolutionary overthrow of the communist regimes
Franks, Carol. "Animal Farm." Magills Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition (2009): 1-2. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page under Napoleons rule, Animal Farm declines steadily. As the pigs break the commandments, they
rewrite them to conform to the new order. 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. Squealer, in his distortion of history and his abuse of
language for political purposes, is a precursor of Winston Smith and the other employees in the Ministry of
Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four who spend their days rewriting history and stripping the English language of its
meaning. Ironically, all the animals pour their energy into creating a system that leads to their oppression.
The final decay of Animal Farm results from the pigs engaging in all the human evils about which old Major
had forewarned them. The pigs become psychologically and even physically indistinguishable from the humans.
The pigs wear clothing, sleep in beds, drink alcohol, walk on two legs, wage wars, engage in trade, and destroy
their own kind. Ultimately, despite old Majors vision, nothing has changed. The pigs and their dogs have
become bureaucrats and tyrants: neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labor.
Though Animal Farm is antitotalitarian, it cannot really be called prodemocratic Socialism, except in the sense
of a warning, because the animals have no choice; the course of their fate appears inevitable. Even if they had
been given a choice, little in the novel indicates that it would have mattered.
Glover, Beaird. "Animal Farm." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23
Feb. 2016.
No Page Animal Farm abounds with allegory, beginning with Old Major, who recalls Karl Marx. Every
character and event may be seen as symbolic of historical Russian figures and events between the years 1917
and 1943. Orwell said the books purpose was the destruction of the Soviet myth. The flag raised by the
animals, with hoof and horn, is similar to the Russian flag of hammer and sickle. Napoleon is generally likened
to Stalin, and the countenance and actions of Snowball are thought to resemble those of Leon Trotsky. The
name Snowball recalls Trotskys white hair and beard, and possibly, too, that he crumbled under Stalins
opposition. The event in which Snowball is chased away from the farm is similar to the expulsion of Trotsky
from Russia in 1929. The book is written with such sophistication and subtlety, however, that a reader unaware
of Russian history might very well see it as an animal story only. Moreover, reading the book strictly to find

reference to Russian history misses an important point: Orwell said the book is intended as a satire on
dictatorship in general. The name of the ruling pig, Napoleon, is a reminder that there have been dictators
outside Russia. Not Stalin in particular, but totalitarianism is the enemy Orwell exposes.
Meyers, Jeffrey, and Isaac Rosenfeld. "Chapter 10: ANIMAL FARM: Part 65: Isaac Rosenfeld, Nation." George
Orwell (0-415-15923-7) (1997): 201-204. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Page 202 In brief, old Major, the pig, shortly before his death, deliver himself of the lessons of his life for the
benefit of the animals of Mr. Joness Manor Farm, pointing out to them how they have been exploited by Man
(capitalism) and urging the revolutionary establishment of a better society (The Communist Manifesto). The
animals drive Mr. Jones off the farm and hold it against his attempts to regain possession (Revolution and defeat
of the Counterrevolution). Led by two pigs, Napoleon (Stalin), more or less in the background, and Snowball
(Trotsky, with a soupon of Leninfor simplicitys sake, Vladimir Ilyitch is left out of the picture, entering it
only as a dybbuk1 who shares with Marx old Majors identity, and with Trotsky, Snowballs) the animals
institute a regime free of Man, based on collective ownership, socialized production, equality, etc.
Brockington, Jr., William S. "Animal Farm." Masterplots II: Juvenile & Young Adult Fiction Series (1991): 1-2.
Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page Orwell meant for his novel to show not only that utopian dreams are unrealistic but also that those who
blindly accept them will be manipulated and controlled by cynics willing to betray the dream. The dream in this
case is a good life for the animals. The method to the dream is, however, far too simplistic. The first slogans,
All Animals Are Equal and Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad, emphasize this simplicity. 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 naif 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.
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. 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. Indeed, at the end of the novel, Animal Farm is renamed Manor
Farm, and the practices that meant so much during the early revolutionary period have been abolished. A
dictatorship has been established; the dream is dead.
"Animal Farm." Recommended Reading: 500 Classics Reviewed (1995): 1. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23
Feb. 2016.
No Page For a time all goes well, but eventually the animals must yield much of the affairs of management to
the pigs, the most intelligent of the animals. Among the pigs, Snowball and Napoleon continually vie for
leadership, until Napoleon drives out his rival and declares him to be a traitor.
With the pigs responsible for all intellectual efforts, they soon become the master class and take on mans
privileges, justifying everything through the propaganda of the pig Squealer. Napoleon establishes a personality
cult around himself and becomes the leader, ordering all activities. The animals lives move back into the
pattern of the time before the revolution.
This novel can be seen simply as a satire on the Soviet Union and its betrayal of the ideals of socialism, but it is
more than that. Orwell makes the animals revolt a symbol for any modern revolution. The rise of a ruling class
of intellectual workers, the development of a leader figure, the use of scapegoats, and, above all, the rewriting
of history and the misuse of language for party purposes, all figure in this satire.
Knapp, John V. "George Orwell." Critical Survey Of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-6. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.

No Page The animals continue to work hard, still believing that they are working for themselves. The changes
Napoleon institutes, however, are so at variance with the initial rules of Animal Farm, and life gets to be so
much drudgery, that no one has the memory to recall the ideals of the past, nor the energy to change the present
even if memories were sound.
Very soon, life at Animal Farm seems indistinguishable from the life the animals led at Manor Farm. Orwell is
not so much ultimately pessimistic as he is realistically moral: Institutionalized hierarchy begets privilege,
which begets corruption of power. The first mistake of the animals was to give over their right to decide who
got the milk and apples. Lord Actions famous statement could not be more appropriate: Power tends to
corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"Animal Farm." Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia Of Literature (1995): N.PAG. Literary Reference Center.
Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
No Page One of Orwell's finest works, it is a political fable based on the events of Russia's Bolshevik revolution
and the betrayal of the cause by Joseph Stalin. The book concerns a group of barnyard animals who overthrow
and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the
animals' intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution and form a dictatorship even more
oppressive and heartless than that of their former human masters. (All animals are equal, but some animals are
more equal than others.)