Animal Farm

By George Orwell
Allegory - Satire - Fable

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

What is Animal Farm?

Animal Farm is a POLITICAL SATIRE a tale of oppressed individuals who long for freedom but are ultimately corrupted by assuming the very power that had originally oppressed them. The story traces the conditions of mistreated animals who can speak and who exhibit many human characteristics. After extreme negligence by their owner, the animals revolt and expel Mr. Jones from the farm. The tale of the society the animals form into a TOTALITARIAN REGIME is viewed as Orwell's critique of the COMMUNIST SYSTEM in the former Soviet Union.

The significance of the novel today

But why now that Soviet Communism has fallen and the Cold War is over does Animal Farm deserve our attention? The answer lies in the power of ALLEGORY. Allegorical fables require the reader to make comparisons and connections so are meaningful to any reader in any historical period. The story of Animal Farm will always have lessons to teach us about the ways that people abuse power and manipulate others. Orwell's chilling story of the betrayal of idealism through tyranny and corruption is as fresh and relevant today as when it was first published in 1945.

Childrens Book? No!

After Animal Farm was published in 1945, Orwell discovered with horror that booksellers were placing his novel on childrens shelves. He travelled from bookstore to bookstore requesting that the book be shelved with adult works. This dual identity - as childrens fable and adult satire - has stayed with Orwells novel and adds to its UNIVERSALITY, being read by individuals of all ages.

Universality is a concept which allows the reader to truly understand the message which the author is trying to express. How? By the author using concepts which the reader is sure to understand. The author focuses on concepts which are concrete and which each individual may have experienced, such as feeling certain emotions which are UNIVERSAL like happiness; anger; jealousy The author may also focus on realistic settings such as a farm or a beach or a field, rather than going to Mars or the Sun.

Universality?

Why choose animals for characters?

In explaining how he came to write Animal Farm, Orwell says he once saw a little boy whipping a horse and he wrote,
It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the [worker].

The countryside provides the perfect rural, idyllic and nostalgic backdrop for Old Majors dream of a perfect state a UTOPIA in which all animals are free. Apart from that Orwell wanted to show how man has the POWER to oppress and exploit animals for his own material gain.

Why choose the farm as a setting?

Fable
The fable is one of the oldest literary forms - older than the novel or short story. It is usually short, written in either verse or prose, and is deliberately invented. A fable is either a short story or folk tale which conveys a moral or message which may be expressed clearly at the end as a maxim. Fables often use animals for their central characters which retain animal traits BUT then talk and act like people. For example, Aesop used the fox to embody the human characteristics of cunning and cleverness. Though Aesop's animal fables were ostensibly about animals, they were really instructional tales about human emotions and human behaviour. The most popular animal fables are the Just So Stories (1902) written by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling's fables were adapted by Disney in the movie The Jungle Book. Kipling influenced Orwell in the form of Animal Farm as Orwell took the short animal fable and expanded it to the length of a short novel in the form of an ALLEGORY.

Allegory
Most fables have TWO levels of meaning. On the surface, the fable is about animals. But on a second level, the animals stand for types of people or ideas. The way the animals interact and the way the plot unfolds says something about the nature of people or the value of ideas. Any type of fiction that has multiple levels of meaning in this way is called an allegory. An allegory is a symbolic story that serves as a disguised representation for meanings other than the literal. The characters are generally embodiments of moral qualities such as strength of character or ambition. It is possible to argue that Animal Farm also has a third and more general level of meaning which adds to its UNIVERSALITY as it still focuses on aspects of life today. For instance, the pigs need not only represent specific tyrannical soviet leaders. They could also be symbols for tyranny more broadly: their qualities are therefore not simply the historical characteristics of a set of actual men but are the qualities of all leaders who rely on repression and manipulation.

Satire
Satire is a literary technique which ridicules its subject by exaggerating faults and revealing hypocrisies, often as a means of provoking change. In a satire, the writer attacks a serious issue by making fun of it. Orwell uses satire to expose what he saw as the myth of Soviet socialism. Thus, the novel as an ALLEGORY tells a story that people of all ages can understand, but it also tells us a second story - that of the real-life revolution.

Point of View
The point of view is the position from which the story is observed or narrated. In Animal Farm Orwell tells the story through a third person, impersonal and omniscient point of view. The narrator is never involved in the action of the story but is able to see into the minds of the characters and understand their motivations. Orwell never tries to bias or influence his readers by manipulating them with the language he uses as he realises that is what the Communist government does to the people in Russia after the revolution trying to show that they are ignorant fools who have no opinion or say over their own life.

Symbolism
Symbolism is when a writer represents a character or an object to stand for something else especially when a material object is used to represent something abstract. We use a heart to show we love someone or else say that red is the colour which shows danger. A deeper form of symbolism is when we use PATHETIC FALLACY where we use aspects of nature to tie into what someone is feeling or to foreshadow what might happen in the future. When it is raining we may say that the heavens are crying, or when it is a stormy day we expect bad things to happen. In Animal Farm, Orwell used the animal characters as symbols for real human counterparts either from history, especially the Russian Revolution, or from life today such as common tyrants or dictators who will always exist.

Dramatic Irony
Irony results when there is inconsistency between what an audience would expect to happen and what actually happens. Orwell uses dramatic irony in Animal Farm as he allows the animals to foreshadow what will happen further on in Animal Farm. The reader knows just what the animals know, but we can see so much more of its significance than they can. The conclusions we reach that the animals never quite get to that the pigs are decadent, corrupt, and immoral are all the more powerful because we arrive at them ourselves, without the narrator pointing these things out to us directly.

Themes
1. Freedom and individual dignity must be guarded very carefully. 2. Language is a very powerful tool; used improperly it can enslave and confuse us. 3. Weakness can be dominated by strength, fear and trickery. 4. Hope and vision must be kept alive or we might live like the animals of Animal Farm. 5. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.