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Keoni Kang
Cindy Rogers
English 12A
July 8, 2016
A2 Animal Farm Composition
Personification is the act of giving human characteristics to nonhuman beings.
The novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is a story about farm animals taking over
their farmers land and rebuilding a new society. Throughout the book, Orwell gives
animals human emotions and personalities in order to connect with the audience.
The author gives certain animals different characteristics. For example, on page
five, a donkey named Benjamin is described as, the oldest animal on the farm, and the
worst tempered, giving him a personality of a grouchy old man, and goes on to say he
only talks to make some cynical remark, also making him a religious pestimist by
saying, God had given him a tail to keep the flies off. On page seven, Old Major, an
elderly contest pig, expresses his ideologies about animal lives saying, No animal in
England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth. Its
easy to associate the an old, irritable donkey and pig as someone who experienced
misery and slavery; it make the story more real to see fantasy characters facing realistic
and depressing conflicts.
The reason why personification is essential to telling the story, is to ensure
readers can relate to the characters. Especially because theyre barn animals,

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creatures that are commonly taught to children as sort of like pets, gives the readers an
emotional connection to the characters. Like Squealer, he is a pig who is trusted by
other animals and gives them all the verdict of whats happening on the farm, what he
really does is over complicate his words to intimidate the other poorly educated animals
into agreeing with everything he says. Pigs can be passive and cuddly, to show what
appears to be an innocent animal actually using propaganda tactics to get others to
obey whatever the pigs say give the reader a more demented perspective on barn
animals.
In Chapter two, the animals take over the farm and begin their own society.
From there on, they face conflicts like work inequality, class discrimination, political
disagreements, and being at war with other farmers, all issues that are relatable to
human civilization. George Orwells use of animals acting like people makes the story
ageless and raceless in which it could be comparable to even the most current conflicts.
If he were to never use personification, however, his message would have been lost
and appear dated in an era once pasted.