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The Dual Purpose of "Animal Farm"
Author(s): Paul Kirschner

Source: The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 55, No. 222 (Nov., 2004), pp. 759-786
Published by: Oxford University Press
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THE DUAL PURPOSE OF ANIMAL FARM
BY PAUL KIRSCHNER
Afternearly sixtyyearsdebatecontinues overtheultimate politicalmeaning of

Animal Farm,owingpartly toitsuseas propaganda, butalsotoOrwell's original
purpose, whichwasartistic as wellas political.
Thisarticle concentrates onthe
former purpose.It showshowfictional rhetoricalstrategiesinevitably ledto a
pessimisticconclusioncontradictingOrwell's ownpoliticalactionsandopinions
duringtheperiod1936-46,and attributes thatcontradiction to theeffect of
Orwell'schosenliterary genre,combining elements ofthefableandthefairy
tale.The subtitle, 'A FairyStory',indicates a neglected aspectof Animal
Farm-literary parodyofthe'proletarian' fairytalethatthrived in the1920s
and 1930sin Germany, theUnitedStates,and,tepidly, in England.A rare
exampleofsucha talefrom the1930sis quotedin fullas an archetype ofthe
politicizedchildren'sstoriesOrwellmayhave been parodying: it displays
strikingrhetoricaland structural
parallels withAnimalFarm.The appealing
formofsuchstories, adoptedbyOrwell,interfered withthefullandaccurate
expressionofhispoliticalthought. AnimalFarmowesbothitspowerandits
ambiguity to theforceandautonomy ofliterature todaymenaced
itself, more
thaneverbythe'gramophone mind'Orwelldetested.
Whoeverfeelsthe value of literature, whoeversees the centralpart it plays in the

development of humanhistory, must also see thelifeand deathnecessityof resisting
whetherit is imposedon us fromwithoutor fromwithin.
totalitarianism,
There is some hope . . . that the liberalhabit of mind, whichthinksof truthas
somethingoutsideyourself, somethingto be discovered,and not somethingthatyou
can makeup as you go along,willsurvive.
(The Collected Essays,Journalismand LettersofGeorgeOrwell)
When,a coupleofyearsago,AnimalFarmwas puton stagein China,thelong

uncertaintyabout its ultimatemeaningshouldhave been dispelled.It dated
back to 1945, when William Empson warnedOrwell that,since allegory
meansmorethanthe authormeans',his book mightmean 'very
'inherently
differentthingsto different readers'.1Sure enough,English communists
attackedAnimalFarmas anti-Soviet,whilea conservative chidedOrwellfor
that is a of
forgetting privateproperty prerequisite personalfreedom.2 Western
propagandistshijacked the book afterOrwell's death,but twentyyearslater
George Woodcockfoundit showedthe identityof governing-class interests
everywhere,and by 1980BernardCrickhad to cautionagainstreadingit as a
1 LettertoG. Orwell,
24Aug.1945(OrwellArchive).
QuotedinB. Crick,George
Orwell:
A Life
(London,1982),491-2.Empson's
youngsoncalledAnimal
Farm'verystrongTorypropaganda'.
2 Ibid.489.
The ReviewofEnglishStudies,New Series,Vol. 55, No. 222, C OxfordUniversityPress 2004; all rightsreserved
760 PAUL KIRSCHNER
caseforrevolution.3 In 1998 criticswerestilldebatingwhetherAnimalFarm

implied'thatrevolution alwaysendsbadlyfortheunderdog,henceto hellwith
itand hailthestatusquo'.4The confusion, as Empsonsaw,camenotonlyfrom
readers'prejudicesbut also fromthestoryitself.
To show why,I shall exploreOrwell'sclaimto have trieddeliberately in
AnimalFarm'to fusepoliticalpurposeand artisticpurposeintoone whole'(i.
to inferOrwell'spurposefromhis
29).s My purposewillbe equallydual: first,
politicalviews;secondly,toexplainthebuilt-inartistic thatmade
contradictions
AnimalFarmfinemeatforpropagandists, and suggesthowtheymaybe, ifnot
In fusingmyownpurposes,I shallnothesitateto
resolved,at leasttranscended.
evokea socialand intellectualethosthattodaymayseemquaintlyarchaic.
I
Defininghis 'political'purposeinAnimalFarmto theAmericancriticDwight
Macdonald,Orwellshowedhe was no crusadinganti-communist:
I think
thatiftheUSSR wereconquered bysomeforeign theworking
country classes
everywherewould loseheart... I wouldn't
wanttosee theUSSR destroyed think
and
itoughttobe defended ifnecessary. aboutit
ButI wantpeopletobecomedisillusioned
and to realizethattheymustbuild theirown Socialistmovement. . . and I wantthe
existence Socialismin theWesttoexerta regenerative
ofdemocratic influence
upon
Russia.6
Orwell's artisticaim was to remedywhat England lacked: 'a literatureof
disillusionment about the Soviet Union' (iii. 272). If we apply Tolstoy's
definitionofart(whichincludesOrwellianhallmarks ofsimplicity, and
clarity,
as theevocationofa feelingonceexperienced
accessibility) so as tomakeothers
feelit,Orwellhad to evokehis disillusionovertheRussianfailureto achieve
whatto EnglishConservatives was anathema:socialequality.
The disillusionis conveyedby continuousnegationof whatis beingsaid,
throughwit,dramatizedironyand intertextuality. The punningpresentment
ofold Major as a 'prizeMiddle Whiteboar' (p. 1)' makesa poorintroduction
to anyspeaker.His boast,'I havehad muchtimeforthoughtas I layalone in
mystall,and I thinkI maysaythatI understand thenatureoflifeon thisearth
as wellas anyanimalnowliving'(p. 3), notonlybetrayswoolly-minded, pigsty
3 See G. Woodcock,The CrystalSpirit(London, 1967), 158-9; Crick,GeorgeOrwell,490.
4 Dwight Macdonald, quoted in V. C. Letemendia,'Revolutionon AnimalFarm: Orwell's
NeglectedCommentary', in G. Holderness,B. Loughrey,and N. Yousaf (edd.), GeorgeOrwell
(London, 1998),24.
5 Volume and page numbersreferto The CollectedEssays,Journalism and Lettersof George
Orwell,ed. S. Orwelland I. Angus,4 vols. (Harmondsworth,1970).
6 Letterto D. Macdonald,5 Sep. 1944 (Yale). Quoted in M. Shelden,Orwell:TheAuthorised
Biography(London, 1992),405.
toAnimalFarmand to Orwell'sprefacesareto GeorgeOrwell,AnimalFarm:A
7 All references
FairyStory,ed. P. Davison (London, 2000), and theappendicesto thatedition.
THE DUAL PURPOSE OF ANIMAL FARM 761
philosophizing;it impugnsanimalwisdomin general.Similarly, his personal

resume,'I am twelve years old and havehad overfour hundred children. Such
is thenaturallifeof a pig' (p. 5), makesit doubtfulthatsocialrevolutioncan
improveanimalnature,and his optimistic prophecythatEnglishfields'Shall
be trodbybeastsalone'(p. 7) is unsettling. Major's axiomthat'All animalsare
comrades'is quicklyexplodedas thedogs chasetheratsand thenvoteagainst
acceptingthemas comrades,whilethe cat, who hasn'teven listened,hedges
her bets by votingon both sides. And witha blast fromhis shotgun,after
whichthewholefarmis 'asleep in a moment'(p. 8), Jonescompletely deflates
Major's oratory.
Intertextually,
Major unwittingly parodiesSaint-Simonand Marxin calling
Man 'the onlycreaturethatconsumeswithoutproducing'(p. 4), sinceMan
does produce,as the animalsfindwhentheyhave to tradewithhim. More
ominously, Major's reference to animallifeas 'miserable,laboriousand short'
(p. 3) echoesthefamousverdicton humanlifeas 'solitary, poor,nasty,brutish,
and short'by Hobbes,8whomOrwellsaw as forecasting and
totalitarianism,9
the name of AnimalFarm's leaderrecallsa Dostoyevskianview thatevery-
wherethereis always
'a firstpersonand a secondperson.The firstactsand thesecondtakes .... In France
therewasa revolution
and everyone wasexecuted.
Napoleoncamealongandtook
The
everything. revolution
is thefirst
person, Napoleonthesecondperson.
and Butit
turnedoutthattherevolutionbecamethesecondpersonandNapoleonbecamethe
first
person.'10
The Battle of the Cowshed likewiseevokes not only the failed Western
interventions againstthe Sovietsin 1918-20,but also the defeatof Europe
by theFrenchrepublicin 1792-5.The Battleof theWindmillringsa special
bell: the repulseof the duke of Brunswickin 1792, followingthe Prussian
bombardment thatmadethewindmillofValmyfamous.More significantly, in
1802 Napoleon restoredslavery,abolishedby the Conventionin 1794. The
Rebellionand its fateexemplify a historicalparadigm."
8 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan(Chicago, 1952),I. xiii (p. 85).

9 'Jonathan Swift:An ImaginaryInterviewBy GeorgeOrwell',in Orwell:TheLostWritings,
ed.
W. J. West (New York, 1985), 113.
10 FyodorDostoyevsky, A Raw Youth,trans.C. Garnett(London, 1916),219.
11 The parallelgainsforcefromtheBolshevists'obsessionwiththeFrenchRevolution.Trotsky
seasons his Historyof theRussianRevolutionand The RevolutionBetrayedwithreferencesto
Danton, Robespierre,and Bonapartism, callingStalin's triumph'The SovietThermidor'.In a
dramaticdebatebetweenLenin and Kerensky,Lenin demanded:'"Then let us haveone oftwo
things:eithera bourgeoisgovernment withitsplansforso-calledsocialreformon paper... or let
us have . . . a Governmentof the proletariat,which had its parallelin 1792 in France."'
Kerensky'sreplywas prophetic:"'We have been referredto 1792 as an exampleof how we
shouldcarryout therevolutionof 1917.But howdid theFrenchrepublicof 1792end?It turned
intoa base Imperialism,whichsetbacktheprogressofdemocracyformanya longyear.. . . You
tell us thatyou fearreaction,"he almostscreamed;"you say thatyou wantto strengthen our
new-wonfreedom, and yetyouproposeto lead us thewayofFrancein 1792.. . . Out of thefiery
762 PAUL KIRSCHNER
More obviously,theswitchfromMajor's anthem'BeastsofEngland'to the

patriotic 'AnimalFarm'parodiesthatfromLenin'sinternationalism to Stalin's
'Socialismin One Country'.The Rebellion,however,copiestheFebruary,not
theOctober,Revolution.In a pamphlet12Orwellmarked'veryrare'and cited
(iv. 85), Maxim Litvinov,the firstSoviet ambassadorto England,told how
spontaneousprotestsbywomenin foodqueues led to riotsin whichCossacks,
thenGuards,joinedthepeople,so that'beforeanyonewas properly aware,the
capitalwas in thehandsoftheworkers and soldiers'.'"The Rebellion,sparked
byJones'sfailureto feedtheanimals,is similarly unplanned:theywintheday
'almostbeforetheyknewwhatwas happening'(p. 12). With historyas his
guide,Orwelldividesthe feelingsthatstarta revoltfromthe ideologyused
afterwards to pervertit. Similarly,the spontaneouscouragedisplayedin the
Battleof the Cowshed is embalmedin the titles'AnimalHero-First and
Second Class': thefirstofficial nod to class distinction.
Naturalisticdescriptionis at firstwhimsical(Clover, cradlingducklings
maternally withher foreleg,'had neverquite got her figureback afterher
fourthfoal',p. 2), but as the Commandments are chippedawayand the pig-
managersincreasinglyresemblefarmers, the allegoryrequiresbalancing.
Physicaldetails,previouslyanthropomorphic, now remindus thatNapoleon
is a pig,sincemorallyhe beginsto seemall too human.Snowballdrawsplans
forthe windmill('witha piece of chalkgrippedbetweenthe knucklesof his
trotter,he would move rapidlyto and fro. . . utteringlittlewhimpersof
excitement'(p. 33)), and Napoleon urinatesoverthem.He signalshis coup
d'etatby 'a high-pitched whimperof a kindno one had everheardhimutter
before'(p. 35). Animalityis preservedby wordplaywhenNapoleon hiresa
humansolicitornamedWhymper-thesound,we now recognize,made by
a pig.
Disillusionis besttransmitted bynarration fromtheanimals'pointofview.
When Muriel spellsout the alteredcommandment 'No animalshall killany
otheranimalwithout cause'(p. 61), we findthattheanimalshaveforgotten the
last two wordsof the originalcommandment. But are our memoriesbetter?
Ransackingthem,we feelthe animals'fadinghopes. And havingbeen kept,
like them,ignorantof theirleader's manoeuvres,we share theirshock at
learningthatNapoleonhas sold thetimberto Frederickandbeencheatedwith
forgedbanknotes.The aim isn'tjustto mimicthediplomaticminuetofWest
and East,eachhopingHitlerwouldattacktheotherfirst;itis to makeus share
the animals' gradual conversionto Benjamin'sview that theirlot cannot
improve-onlyworsen.Yet the verydevicesvindicating Benjamin'spessim-
chaos thatyou wishto makewillarise,likea Phoenix,a dictator"'(H. Pitcher,Witnesses

ofthe
RussianRevolution(London, 1994), 112-14).
12 M. Litvinov,TheBolshevikRevolution:ItsRiseandMeaning(London, 1918): 'A Collectionof
Pamphlets,MainlyPolitical,Formedby GeorgeOrwell' (BritishLibrary).
13 Ibid. 27.
ism bolstersympathy withtherank-and-file animals.When,aftertheirinitial

victory,we are told: 'Some hams hangingin the kitchenweretakenout for
burial' (p. 14), the humorousconceitis endearing;but deepersympathyis
gained by an inside view. Aftera new 'rebellion'is crushed (the word
'revolution',implyinglastingchange,is avoided) and the commandment
againstmurderis broken,a view of the farmon a clear springevening
dissolvesinto the mind of Clover,lyingon the knollwhereshe once fRted
victory:
Ifsheherself hadhadanypicture ithadbeenofa society
ofthefuture, ofanimals set
freefrom hunger andthewhip,allequal,eachworking accordingto hiscapacity,the
strongprotecting theweak,as shehadprotectedthelostbroodofducklings withher
forelegon thenightofMajor'sspeech.Instead-shedid notknowwhy-theyhad
cometoa timewhennoonedaredspeakhismind,whenfierce, growling dogsroamed
everywhere, and when youhad towatch comrades
your torntopiecesafter confessing
to shocking crimes.Therewasno thought ofrebellion
ordisobedience in hermind.
She knewthatevenas things weretheywerefarbetter offthantheyhadbeenin the
daysofJones, andthatbeforeallelseitwasneedfultopreventthereturnofthehuman
Whatever
beings. she
happened, wouldremain work
faithful, hard,carry outtheorders
thatweregiventoher,andaccepttheleadership ofNapoleon. Butstill,itwasnotfor
thisthatshe and all theotheranimalshad hopedand toiled.. . . Such wereher
thoughts, though shelackedthewordstoexpressthem.(pp. 58-9)
The inarticulate,
dupedbythearticulate, havebeenevictednotfromparadise,
but froma dreamof one: now theveryidea of rebellionis dead. Disenchant-
mentis completebeforethe end of the book,as Squealer proclaimsvictory
overFrederick,and theloyalBoxerasks,'Whatvictory?' (p. 71), wideninghis
chinkof doubtover Snowball's'crimes'.Yet to the last,the 'loweranimals',
now unableto remember betterdays,continueto hope. (Memoryforthemis
theenemyofhope.) Literaryform-theirqualityas animals-adds thedeeper
sadnessof losersin thebattleof evolution.
II
So pessimistican outlookis beliedby Orwell'sown lifeand opinionsduring
the years1936-45. Benjamin'sgloomyscepticismis sometimesattributed to
Orwell's disillusionment with socialismafterStalinisttreacheryin Spain,
coveredup by the'capitalistanti-Fascistpress'(i. 318). The truthis just the
opposite.Orwellhad seen throughthe USSR longbeforeSpain. In 1940 he
wrote:'All people who are morallysound have knownsinceabout 1931 [the
peakofforcedcollectivization]thattheRussianregimestinks'(i. 583). In 1947
he spokeof regardingit 'withplainhorror'for'quite 15 years'(iv. 355). Yet,
two weeks beforeleaving Spain, afterthe Barcelona fightingand being
woundedat the front,he declared:'I . . . at last reallybelievein Socialism,
whichI neverdid before'(i. 301). In TheLion and theUnicorn (1941) Orwell
advocatednationalizationof land,mines,railways,banks,and big industries;
764 PAUL KIRSCHNER
incomeceilings;classlesseducation;and DominionstatusforIndia.In 1946he

recalled:'The Spanishwar and othereventsin 1936-7 turnedthe scale and
thereafter I knewwhereI stood.Everylineof seriousworkthatI havewritten
since 1936has been written, directlyor indirectly, againsttotalitarianism and
fordemocratic Socialism,as I understand it' (i. 28). 'Socialism'meantequality;
not,as its enemiesclaimed,loss of liberty.On the contrary, 'the onlyregime
which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a Socialist
regime'(i. 373). 'Liberty'began with fairer income distribution: 'The glaring
inequality ofwealththatexistedin Englandbeforethewarmustnotbe allowed
to recur'(iii. 51). Whilerejecting'the inherently mechanistic Marxistnotion
thatifyoumakethenecessarytechnicaladvancethemoraladvancewillfollow
of itself'(i. 583), he defendedMarx on novelgroundsclaimingthat:
themostimportant partofMarx'stheory is contained in thesaying:'Whereyour
treasureis,there will yourheartbe also.'[Luke 12: 34] But before Marxdeveloped it,
whatforcehadthatsaying had?Whohadpaidanyattention to it?Whohadinferred
fromit-what it certainly implies-thatlaws,religions and moralcodesare all a
superstructure builtoverexisting property relations? It wasChrist, accordingto the
Gospel, who uttered the but
text, itwas Marx who brought itto life.And eversince he
didso themotives ofpoliticians,
priests,judges, moralists and millionaireshave been
underthedeepestsuspicion-which, ofcourse,is whytheyhatehimso much.(iii.
121-2)14
Althoughby 'Communism'OrwellusuallymeanttheRussianregimeor its

advocacy('the "Communism"oftheEnglishintellectual is ... thepatriotism
of the deracinated'(i. 565)), he also used the wordin an ideal sense:
In mid-nineteenth-centuryAmerica menfeltthemselvesfreeandequal,werefreeand
ofpureCommunism.
equal,so faras thatis possibleoutsidea society (i. 547)
Onecanaccept, andmostenlightened peoplewouldaccept,theCommunist thesisthat
purefreedom willonlyexistina classless andthatoneismostnearly
society, freewhen
oneis working tobringsucha society about.(iv.84)
Whathe did notacceptwas 'the quite unfoundedclaimthatthe Communist
Partyis itselfaimingat theestablishmentoftheclasslesssocietyand thatin the
U.S.S.R. thisaim is actuallyon thewayto beingrealized'(iv. 84).
But while recognizingsimilaritiesin practicebetweenNazi and Soviet
regimes,Orwell neverequated fascismor Nazism witheithersocialismor
communism.In 1936 he observedthat,in readingMarxistliterary criticism,
'even a quite intelligentoutsidercan be takenin by the vulgarlie, now so
14 He also gavenewmeaningto Marx's famousdefinition ofreligion:'Marx did notsay,at any

rate in that place, thatreligionis merelya dope handed out fromabove; he said that it is
somethingthepeople createforthemselvesto supplya need thathe recognizedto be a realone.
"Religionis thesighofthesoul in a soullessworld.Religionis theopiumofthepeople." Whatis
he sayingexceptthatman does notlive by breadalone,thathatredis notenough,thata world
worthlivingin cannotbe foundedon "realism"and machine-guns?' (ii. 33). Marxismmeantthat
thequestionofman'splace in theuniverse'cannotbe dealtwithwhiletheaveragehumanbeing's
preoccupationsare necessarilyeconomic. It is all summed up in Marx's sayingthat after
Socialismhas arrived,humanhistorycan begin' (iii. 83).
popular,that"Communismand Fascismarethesamething"'(i. 291). He saw

Germanfascismas 'a formofcapitalismthatborrowsfromSocialismjustsuch
featuresas willmakeit efficient
forwarpurposes'(ii. 101), and drewa basic
distinction:
the idea underlyingFascismis irreconcilably
differentfromthatwhichunderlies
Socialism.Socialism
aims,ultimately, offreeandequalhumanbeings.
ata world-state
It takestheequality
ofhumanbeingsforgranted. Nazismassumesjusttheopposite.
The driving forcebehindtheNazi movement is thebeliefin humaninequality,
the
superiorityofGermans to all other the of
races, right Germany to ruletheworld.
(ii.
102)
For Orwell,Stalinismwas thebetrayalof an ideal,Nazism the fulfilment of
one. In 1937he warned:'Fascismafterall is onlya development ofcapitalism,
and themildestdemocracy, so-called,is liableto turnintoFascismwhenthe
pinch comes' (i. 318). The next yearhe joinedtheIndependentLabour Party
and gavehisreasons:'It is notpossibleforanythinking personto livein sucha
society as our own without to
wanting change it. ... One has gotto be actively
a Socialist,notmerelysympathetic to Socialism'(i. 374).
The tendencyto equatethescepticalBenjaminwithOrwelltherefore looks
odd, until one notices thatit is Benjamin who untypically comes galloping,
brayingat thetopofhislungs,'Come at once!They'retakingBoxeraway!'and
that,as theanimalsstupidlywavegoodbyeto Boxerin thevan,it is Benjamin
whoshouts:'Fools! Do younotsee whatis written on thesideofthat
van?...
Do you not understandwhat that means? They are takingBoxer to the
knacker's!'(pp. 81-2). The scene echoes the GPU's abductionof Trotsky,
relatedbyhiswife:'I shoutedto themenwhowerecarrying Lev D[avidovitch]
down the stairsand demandedthattheylet out mysons,theelderof whom
was to accompanyus intoexile.... On thewaydownthestairs,Lvova rangall
the door-bells,shouting:"They're carryingComrade Trotskyaway!"''"
Internally,however,what mattersis thatBenjamintells the animalswhat
theycannot'read' forthemselves, as theauthor/narrator has beendoingforus.
By usurping authorial function, Benjaminsuddenly becomes the author-not
by prudentlykeepingsilent, but by placing sympathy before safety.He
becomes'Orwell' when,throughhim,the 'author'suddenlyseems to drop
his maskand showwherehis heartlies.
In portraying Stalinistbetrayal,in fact,Orwellimplicitly arraigns capitalism
as well.TimothyCook firstremarked in printthatBoxer'smotto'I willwork
harder'echoes thatof the immigrant 'workhorse' Jurgisin Upton Sinclair's
exposureof the Chicago meatpacking industry TheJungle(1906).16The
in
echo is probablydeliberate-Orwellonce praisedSinclair'sfactualaccuracy
(i. 262)-but it is too simpleto say, as Cook does, thatAnimalFarm is an
15 Leon Trotsky,My Life(New York, 1930), 541.

16 T. Cook, 'Upton Sinclair'sTheJungleand Orwell'sAnimalFarm:A RelationshipExplored',
ModernFictionStudies,30/4 (Winter1984),696-703.
766 PAUL KIRSCHNER
'answerto the hopefulmessage'17of Sinclair'sbook,to whichJurgislistens

onlyaftertheworkaccidentthat-analogouslyto Boxer'sphysicaldecline-
puts him on the capitalistscrapheap.Cook skipsSinclair'smostsensational
revelation:theprocessing forsale as lardofworkerswhofellintotherendering
vats-a cannibalistic touchparalleledinAnimalFarmwhenthepigsbuya case
of whiskywiththe moneytheyget forBoxer,who fulfils Major's prediction
thatJoneswillone day sell himto theknacker's.Boxer'sfate,in otherwords,
isn't specificto the USSR. Far fromrefuting socialism,AnimalFarmshows
thattotalitarianism in socialistclothingendsin theveryevilsofcapitalismthat
led Orwellin 1941to considersocialisminevitable:'The inefficiency ofprivate
capitalismhas beenprovedall overEurope.Its injusticehasbeenprovedin the
East End of London' (ii. 117).Afterwriting AnimalFarmhe calledcapitalism
'doomed' and 'not worthsavinganyway'(iii. 266).
WhatOrwelldiscreditedwas notsocialismbut its sham:genuineprogress,
he believed,'can onlyhappenthroughincreasing enlightenment, whichmeans
thecontinuousdestruction of myths'(iv. 56). This has been thewriter'stask
sinceAristophanes, and in the 1940sit was notconfinedto exposingRussian
communism.When, in 1949, ArthurMiller's naive free-enterprise idealist
WillyLoman, sacked afterthirty-four yearsby his formerboss's son,belatedly
discoveredan unmarketable value-'You can't eat an orangeand throwthe
peel away-a manis nota piece of fruit!'-Millereffectively demythologized
his own country'seconomicsystem.Decades laterhe recalledhow Columbia
PicturesfirstweakenedthemovieDeathofa Salesman,thenaskedhimto issue
an anti-communist publicitystatementand prefacethe filmby interviews
praisingselling as a profession.18 On the otherside of the ideologicaldivide
Britishpublishers,kow-towingto left-wingreaders and a wartimeally,
similarlyrejectedAnimalFarm.Orwell'sproposedprefacewas prescient:
ForallI know, bythetimethisbookispublished myviewoftheSovietregime maybe
thegenerally-accepted one.Butwhatuse wouldthatbe in itself? To exchange one
orthodoxy foranother is notnecessarily an advance.The enemyis thegramophone
mind,whether ornotoneagreeswiththerecordthatis beingplayedat themoment.
(p. 106)
At the closingbanquet Soviet tyranny mirrorsits capitalistcounterpart.
Orwell claimed, however,that he meant to end not with a 'complete
reconciliationof the pigs and the humans',but on 'a loud note of discord',
'for I wroteit immediately afterthe Teheran Conferencewhicheverybody
thought had established
the best possiblerelationsbetweentheUSSR and the
I
West. personallydid not believethatsuch good relationswould last long;
and, as eventshave shown,I wasn'tfarwrong'(p. 113). But if the banquet
parodiesTeheran, the shot that goes home is Pilkington'ssolidaritywith
AnimalFarm's proprietors in extractingmoreworkforless food than any
17 Cook, 'Sinclair'sJungle',697.
18 ArthurMiller, Timebends: A Life(London, 1987), 315.
otherfarmerin the country:'If you have yourlower animals to contend with ...
we have our lower classes!' (p. 92). Whom 'we' stood for,Orwell made clear in
1942:
The war has broughtthe class natureof theirsocietyverysharplyhome to English
people, in two ways. First of all thereis the unmistakablefactthatall real power
dependson class privilege.You can onlygetcertainjobs ifyouhavebeen to one ofthe
rightschools,and ifyoufailand haveto be sacked,thensomebodyelse fromone ofthe
rightschoolstakesover,and so it continues.This maygo unnoticedwhenthingsare
prospering, but becomesobviousin momentsof disaster.(ii. 241)
Asked if he had intended a statementabout revolutionin general,Orwell said

that he had meant that
thatkindof revolution(violentconspiratorial revolution,led by unconsciously
power-
hungrypeople) can only lead to a changeof masters.I meantthe moralto be that
revolutions
onlyeffect a radicalimprovement whenthemassesarealertandknowhowto
chuckouttheirleadersas soonas thelatterhavedonetheirjob. The turning-point ofthe
storywas supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves
(Kronstadt).Iftheotheranimalshadhad thesensetoputtheirfootdownthen,itwould
havebeen all right.. . . In thecase of theTrotskyists
... theyfeelresponsibleforthe
eventsin theUSSR up to about 1926 and have to assumethata suddendegeneration
tookplaceaboutthatdate,whereasI thinkthewholeprocesswasforeseeable-andwas
foreseenbya fewpeople,e.g. BertrandRussell-fromtheverynatureoftheBolshevik
WhatI wastrying
party. tosaywas,'You can'thavea revolution
unlessyoumakeitfor
yourself;thereis no suchthingas a benevolentdictatorship.'19
So muchforEliot'sdismissalof the'positivepointofview'inAnimalFarmas
'generallyTrotskyite'.20Yet Orwell'sown exegesisis uneasy,sincetheinitial
revolt,despite indoctrination by the pigs, is not conspiratorial but spon-
taneous.It also begs vitalquestions.How can revolutionbe achieved?How
shouldthe'masses''chuckout' leaderswhohaveseizedpower?Leninhoped-
reckoningwithoutStalin-that education and mass participationwould
naturallyfollowa violentconspiratorial revolution-forhim the only kind
feasible.Similarly,Orwell assumed in 1940 that revolutionwould come
automaticallythroughwinningthewar,but latersaw he had 'underrated the
enormousstrength of the forcesof reaction'(iii. 339). He continuedto back
Russia 'because I thinkthe U.S.S.R. cannotaltogetherescape its past and
retainsenoughoftheoriginalideasoftheRevolutiontomakeita morehopeful
phenomenonthanNazi Germany'(iii. 178), but he nailedthe rootcause of
revolutionary failure:
Throughouthistory,one revolutionafteranother. . . has simplyled to a changeof
becausenoserious
masters, effort thepowerinstinct....In
hasbeenmadetoeliminate
atanyratetheoneswho'gotthere',
themindsofactiverevolutionaries, thelongingfor
19 Letterto D. Macdonald,5 Dec. 1946 (Yale). Quoted in Letemendia,'Revolutionon Animal

Farm',24 and, in part,in Shelden,Orwell,407.
20 Letterto G. OrwellfromT. S. Eliot,13July1944(copyin OrwellArchive).Quotedin Crick,
GeorgeOrwell,458.
768 PAUL KIRSCHNER
a justsocietyhasalwaysbeenfatally
mixedup withtheintention
tosecurepowerfor
themselves.(iv.36)
In thislight,Eliot's cavil,'afterall, yourpigsare farmoreintelligent
thanthe
other animals, and thereforethe best qualified to run the farm . . . so that
whatwas needed(someonemightargue)was notmorecommunism but more
public-spirited pigs',21looks cagily facetious.
What was needed (someone
mightreply)was,precisely, realimplementation oftheideal perverted by the
self-servingpigs-somethingEliot,withhis personalinvestment in religious
conservatism, wouldhardlyhaveapproved.Even Empson'sobjectionthatthe
Revolutionappeared foredoomedis redundant:Orwell knew that 'all the
seeds ofevilweretherefromthestart'(iv. 35). The depthofhis disillusionis
nevertheless a measureof his sympathy withthe hopes betrayed.Fearinga
sell-out of socialism by those waving its flag at home, he chose the
IndependentLabour Partybecause it alone provided'the certaintythat I
wouldneverbe led up thegardenpathin thenameof capitalistdemocracy'(i.
375). When Attleetook over in 1945 Orwell was on his guard:'A Labour
government may be said to mean businessif it (a) nationalizesland, coal
mines, railways,public utilitiesand banks, (b) offersIndia immediate
Dominion Status (this is a minimum),and (c) purgesthe bureaucracy, the
army,thediplomaticservice,etc.,so thoroughly as to forestall
sabotagefrom
theRight'(iii. 448). He facedthedilemma:'Capitalismleads to dole queues,
thescrambleformarkets, and war.Collectivismleadsto concentration camps,
leader worship,and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned
economycan be somehowcombinedwiththefreedomof theintellect, which
can onlyhappeniftheconceptof rightand wrongis restoredto politics'(iii.
144). Yet he scornedthe flattering unctionof 'neo-pessimists': 'Men cannot
be made betterby act of Parliament;therefore I mayas well go on drawing
my dividends' (iii. 82). His answer was to 'dissociate Socialism from
Utopianism'(iii. 83) and seek progressthroughfailureitself:'Perhapssome
degreeof suffering is ineradicablefromhumanlife,perhapsthechoicebefore
man is alwaysa choiceof evils,perhapseven the aim of Socialismis not to
maketheworldperfectbut to makeit better.All revolutions are failures,but
they are not all the same failure'
(iii. 282).
III
None of this philosophycomes acrossin AnimalFarm. In fact,Eliot's red
herringhighlightsa troublingcorrelation.
'Class' in AnimalFarm-unlike in
England-is determinedby nativeintelligence.It is 'the more intelligent
animals'(p. 9) whoseoutlookis transformedbyMajor's speech.The pigsrule
by brainpower('The otheranimalsunderstoodhow to vote,but could never
21 Quoted in Crick,GeorgeOrwell,458.
thinkofanyresolutions oftheirown' (p. 19)). Exceptfortheauthor'salterego

the
Benjamin, pigsalonelearnto readperfectly. On theotherhand,thenoble,
selflessBoxer,whohas 'no wishto takelife,notevenhumanlife'(p. 28), is of
'stupidappearance'and 'not of first-rate intelligence' (p. 2). It is hardnot to
suspect that it is he
because is stupid that he is good; that power-hunger must
accompanyintelligence-unless checked by an instinct of self-preservation
(Benjamin,who can read as well as any pig, wiselyabstainsfromdoingso).
Intelligence-aimingat power,safety,or animalcomforts-itself becomesa
satiricaltarget.The Rebellionis at firstbeneficial(a detailprofessional anti-
communistsnaturallyignored).The faultlies not in the theorybut in the
theorists.In thepassageOrwelldeemedcrucial,thecleverpigs,includingboth
Napoleonand Snowball,privatizethemilkand applesinsteadofsharingthem
out equally,arguingthattheyare brainworkersand thatSciencehas proved
milkand applesnecessaryfortheirwell-being, withoutwhichJoneswillcome
again.A newclasssystemis bornbased on biological inequality, itscommand-
mentsissuednot by the sugar-candy religion of the preachingravenMoses,
but by the intellectual religion of Science (Lenin's 'scientific socialism').As
theirpilferedprivilegescoalesce,thepigslearnto walkon theirhindlegs,and
accordinglyteach the sheep to chant,'Four legs good-two legs better',
therebyhypostatizing managerialfunctioninto ruling-classstatus.The last
altered commandmenton the barn wall-that new English proverb'All
animalsare equal, but some are more equal thanothers'-may come from
ParadiseLost,when Eve decides thathidingher ill-gottenknowledgefrom
Adam will renderher 'moreequal, and perhapsI A thingnot undesirable,
sometimeSuperior'(a professedaim of removing inequalitymasksa desireto
reverseit). Crick cites Orwell's claim to have discovered'the joy of mere
words'22readingParadiseLostat Eton,and theattribution is appositebothto
lost paradisesand to intellectualpower-seeking: it is the cleveranimalswho
become'moreequal'.
This exaltationof brainworkfollowsallegoricallogic ratherthan Soviet
dogma.'Even themoststubbornamongthe'intellectuals', Litvinovpredicted
in 1918,'willsoon learnthat,afterall, thepeopleis a muchbettermasterthan
thecapitalist,and thata Socialistregimeis likelyto renderthemmorehappy
thana bourgeoisregime.'23 AnimalFarm,however,invertsHobbes's apology
forabsolutism:it is notequalityoffacultiesthatfostersdangerous'equalityof
hope'24but equalityof hope thatfounderson unequalfaculties.Empsonsaw
the paradox:
withitsunescapable
ofthefarmyard,
theeffect is tosuggest
racialdifferences, thatthe
Russianscenehadunescapable too-so themetaphor
socialdifferences suggeststhat
wasalwaysa pathetically
theRussianrevolution impossibleattempt. . . . thepigscan
22 Ibid. 123.
23 Litvinov,TheBolshevikRevolution, 54.
24 Hobbes, Leviathan,I. xiii(p. 84).
770 PAUL KIRSCHNER
turnintomen,butthestory
is farfrom onefeelthatanyoftheotheranimals
making
couldhaveturnedintomen...25
The implication is probablythelastthingOrwellintended:he,ifanyone,knew
thatnothingsuitsa rulingclass betterthana geneticalibi. Rather,he meant
thatanimalkind's dreamofequalityfounders becausetheverybrainsneededto
achieveit demandsuperiorstatus:thepowerofreasonbecomesthereasonof
power.
Stressingthepigs' clevernessmayhavebeena swipeat Britishintellectuals,
who alone acceptedthe 'ruthlessideologiesof the Continent'and formedan
'islandofbigotryamidthegeneralvagueness'(iii. 31). In 1940Orwellnoted,
'The thingthatfrightens me aboutthemodernintelligentsia is theirinability
to see thathumansocietymustbe based on commondecency,whateverthe
politicaland economicformsmay be.' His 'chief hope' was the ordinary
person'smoralcode: 'I haveneverhad theslightest fearofa dictatorship ofthe
I
proletariat.. . . But admitto havinga perfecthorrorof a dictatorship of
theorists'(i. 582-3). Afterwriting AnimalFarmhe calledBritishintellectuals
'moretotalitarian-minded thanthecommonpeople'(iii. 143)and observed:'In
ourcountry. .. itis theliberalswhofearliberty and theintellectualswhowant
to do dirton theintellect'(p. 107).
The pigs' intellect,however,may also reflecta historicalscruple.Orwell
admittedthathis knowledgeof Russia consisted'onlyof whatcan be learned
by readingbooksand newspapers'(p. 111). One book he mentionsrespect-
fully,JohnReed's Ten Days That Shook the World(p. 170), mirrorsthe
paradoxof AnimalFarm. Reed, also anti-intellectual but on othergrounds,
insiststhattherevolutionwas made by the masses;thattheBolshevikswere
'not richin trainedand educatedmen'.26He identifies 'intellectuals'withthe
provisionalgovernment, citinga youngwoman'ssneerat soldiersand work-
men arrivingat the Congressof Soviets:'See how roughand ignorantthey
look!'27When an anarchistcalls the Bolsheviks'common,rude, ignorant
persons,withoutaestheticsensibilities', Reed snorts:'He was a realspecimen
of the Russian intelligentsia'. he hails 'greatLenin' as 'a
Yet, paradoxically,
leaderpurelyby virtueof intellect;colourless,humourless, uncompromising
and detached,withoutpicturesqueidiosyncrasies-butwith the power of
explainingprofoundideas in simpleterms,of analysinga concretesituation.
And combinedwithshrewdness, thegreatestintellectualaudacity.'28
This kindofthingbaffled Britishjournalists.
E. H. Wilsoncomplainedthat
Lenin frequently introduced'politicaland economicconceptionswhichcan
hardlybe intelligible to untrainedminds'.PhilipsPricerecalledhimunflatter-
inglyas 'a shortmanwitha roundhead,smallpig-likeeyes,and close-cropped
25 Letterto G. Orwell,24 Aug. 1945 (OrwellArchive).Quoted in Crick,GeorgeOrwell,491.

26 J. Reed, TenDays ThatShooktheWorld(1919; New York,1992), 90.
27 Ibid. 26. 28 Ibid. 91-2.
hair.... One satspellboundat hiscommandoflanguageand thepassionofhis

denunciation. But whenit was all overone feltinclinedto scratchone's head
and wonderwhatit was all about.'29RobertBruceLockhart,in Memoirsofa
British Agent,learnedto respectLenin's 'intellectual capacity',butat firstwas
moreimpressedby 'his tremendous will-power, relentlessdetermination,
his
and his lack of emotion.He furnished a completeantithesisto Trotsky ...
Trotskywas a greatorganiserand a man of immensephysicalcourage.But,
morally,he was as incapableof standingagainstLenin as a fleawould be
againstan elephant.'30
Orwell'sview of Lenin was hypothetical. In 1944 he generalizedthat'all
effortsto regenerate
societyby violent means lead to thecellarsoftheO.G.P.U.
Lenin leads to Stalin,and would have come to resembleStalin if he had
happenedto survive'(iii. 278). In 1946 he coupled Lenin withCromwellas
'one of those politicianswho win an undeservedreputationby dying
prematurely. Had he lived, it is probablethat he would eitherhave been
thrownout,likeTrotsky,3' or wouldhavekepthimselfin powerbymethodsas
or as
barbarous, nearly barbarous, as thoseofStalin'(iv. 200-1). This doesnot,
nevertheless, make Napoleon a composite.AlthoughLockhart'ssimilefits
Snowball and Napoleon, the latterprevailsnot by intellectualand moral
ascendancy-no pig matches Lenin there-but by self-seekingcunning.
Orwell specifiedhis targetby alteringhis text to Napoleon's advantage
when the windmillis blown up, to be 'fairto J[oseph]S[talin],as he did
stay in Moscow duringthe German advance' (iii. 407). If he bent over
backwardsto be fairto a 'disgustingmurderer'(ii. 461), he mighthave felt
a qualm in parodyingthe Revolutionminusits mastermind. The cleverpigs
would make amends:if 'the symmetry of the story'(p. 113) meantleaving
Lenin out,his distinguishing mark,at least,could be leftin.
IV
In anycase, Orwellwas boundby theformhe used,one responsiblebothfor
ofAnimalFarmand forits permanent
the contradictions appeal. Initially,he
describedit as 'a kind of parable'.32A parable makes a point, not fine
distinctions,and a fable is also limited.33It may be because Orwell felt
29 Quoted in Pitcher,Witnesses
oftheRussianRevolution,
110-11, 112.
30 R. H. B. Lockhart,Memoirsofa BritishAgent(London, 1932), 238.
31 Trotskyquotes Krupskayain 1926: 'If Ilych were alive,he would probablyalreadybe in
prison': TheRevolution
Betrayed(New York, 1995), 93-4.
32 M. Meyer,Not PrinceHamlet:Literaryand Theatrical Memoirs(London, 1989), 68.
33 For example,evenifOrwellhad notstressedthepigs' clevernesstheywouldstillhavehad to
dominate by intelligence,not education. Letemendia ('Revolution on Animal Farm', 17),
however,breachesthe metaphorin blamingthe passivityof the animalson theirbrieflifespan
and 'consequentshortnessof theirmemory',and a class structurefixedby 'theirimmutable
772 PAUL KIRSCHNER
constrictedbytheparableformthathe redefined hisbookas 'a littlefairystory

... witha and
politicalmeaning'34 finally subtitled it 'A FairyStory'.
The misnomermeritsattention.AnimalFarm has none of the fairies,
princes,witches,spells,magictransformations, or happyendingsassociated
withthe'fairystory'.35 Once themetaphoris established, therestis history. In
fact,Animal Farm has been called a defined
'fable', as a 'brief,singleepisode'in
whichspeakinganimals,plants,objects,and humansmetaphorically illustrate
and satirizehumanconduct,although'in practiceitis occasionally renderedin
termsof othergenericforms:forinstanceas mirchen[folktales](e.g. "Little
Red RidingHood")'.36Chesterton moreacutelycomparedpersonsin a fableto
algebraicabstractions or chess pieces,whereasthefairytale
revolves
absolutely onthepivotofhumanpersonality. Ifnoherowerethere tofightthe
dragons,we should noteven know that were
they dragons. ... If there
is no personal
princeto findtheSleepingBeauty, shewillsimply sleep.Fablesreposeon quitethe
oppositeidea;thateverything is itself,
andwillin anycasespeakforitself. The wolf
thefoxwillalwaysbe foxy.37
willalwaysbe wolfish;
AnimalFarmspansbothgenres:thesheepremainsheep; thedogs,dogs; the
cat, a cat; but the pigs, horses,and donkeyall displayelementsof 'human
personality',althoughBenjamin'sworld-pessimism goesbackto IEsop's fable
'The Oxen and theButchers',in whichan old ox stopshisbrothers fromrising
againstthebutchers, arguingthattheyat leastcauseno needlesspain,butthat,
if theyare killed,inexperiencedslaughterers will replace them and inflict
'For
greatersuffering: you may be sure that,even thoughall the Butchers
perish, mankind willnever go without theirbeef.'38'Fairytale' ofcoursemay
simplysignifyfantasy, but this fits
hardly AnimalFarm,whichderivesits
authority preciselyfromhistoricaleventsthatare in turnilluminatedby it.
The subtitlepoints,therefore, to a parodic impulse,like that which the
functionson thefarm'.In fact,Benjamin,who stresseshis longevity,

is as passiveas theothers,
and iftheyare all made victimsofzoologicallimitations
themeaningis lost.Their actions,fate,
and differencesin intelligence
mustbe read as human.Lack of previouseducationis a common
extrinsic
factor,but whenthe pigs tryto teachtheanimalsto read,onlyBenjaminattainstheir
proficiency-proving thepigs' inbornsuperiority.
34 Letterto Gollancz, 19 Mar. 1944,quoted in Crick,GeorgeOrwell,452.
35 The 'fairystory'or contedefies,a terminventedby educatedwomenwho in the 1690s gave
literarypolish to medievaland folktales,does not have 'political'meaning,althoughPerrault
used itto preach'morals'endorsingthesocialorder.(Perraultdid notcall hiscollectionContesde
fiesbutHistoires passe:Avecdesmoralites
ou contesdu temps (Storiesor Tales ofPast Times: With
Morals).)
36 D. M. Roemer,in M. E. Brownand B. A. Rosenberg(edd.), Encyclopedia ofFolkloreand
Literature(Santa Barbara,Calif.,1998), 195, 198.
37 G. K. Chesterton,introduction to Esop's Fables,trans.V. S. Vernon-Jones,
illus. Arthur
Rackham(London, 1975), 10.
38 Ibid. 72. Orwell,however,was modernin makinghis protagonist a community.
A precedent
was Mark Twain's 'The Man That CorruptedHadleyburg'(1899), in whicha self-righteous
townrevisesits motto'Lead Us Not Into Temptation'to 'Lead Us Into Temptation',afterits
renownedhonestyis shownto be skin-deep.
Teheran conferenceinspired.But why parodya 'fairystory'for 'political'

purposes?
The answermay again lie in the springsof Orwell's inspiration.In his
prefaceto theUkrainianeditionhe mentionshavingseena carthorse whipped
and thinkingthat 'men exploitanimalsin much the same way as the rich
exploitthe proletariat'(p. 112), but thisskirtsthe issue.39Othersuggested
'sources' are equally unconvincing.40The parodic mode is more fertile.
Parodiesof magictalesgo back to theirinception,and fableshave also been
parodied,41butCharlesDickensprovidedtheprecedentoffairy-tale parodyat
one remove.When George Cruikshank'alteredthe textof a fairystory'to
propagate'doctrinesofTotal Abstinence, Prohibitionofthesale ofspirituous
liquors,Free Trade, and PopularEducation',42 Dickens vowed:
Halfplayfully I meantoprotest
& halfseriously moststrongly alteration-for
against
any purpose-of the beautiful little stories which are so tenderly& humanly useful to
us in these times when the world is too much with us, early& late; and then to re-write
Cinderella according to Total-abstinence, Peace Society, and Bloomer principles, and
especially for their propagation.43
39 Orwellhad alreadyused the horsein an abandonedwar novel,'The Quick and the Dead',
wherean officer sadisticallywhipsa dyinghorsenamed'old Boxer','presumably in theretreatin
1918': OrwellArchive,'LiteraryNotebookNo. 1', pp. 14-15.
40 It has been claimedthatOrwellwas directlyinspiredby his own BBC adaptationofIgnazio
Silone's 'The Fox', misleadingly called 'a politicalallegoryset in a pig farm'(The Lost Writings,
ed. West, 60). Formallyit is not 'allegory',but a realisticstoryin whichan anti-fascist Ticino
peasantgrowsto like an injuredItalianengineerbroughtinto his house. When the engineeris
identified as a local fascistspythepeasanthumanelyrefusesto havehim killedby a fellowanti-
fascist,onlyto see himescape withdocumentsleadingto mass arrestsof Italianworkmen.The
peasant emotionallyidentifiesthe treacherousspy with a prowlingfox that has finallybeen
trapped,and hacksit to bits.All thecharacters, foxincluded,are fleshand blood,and the story
has no relationin formor contenttoAnimalFarm.Crick(GeorgeOrwell,459) morepersuasively
cites the 'influence'of Swift'sHouyhnhnms,which Orwell regardedas havingreached 'the
higheststageof totalitarian organization'(iv. 252); but the dynamicof transformation, vitalto
AnimalFarm,is absentfromthe Houyhnhnms'staticworld.
41 After1698 contesde fies were criticizedas extravagantand parodied on the stage: see
G. Rouger,introduction to Contesde Perrault(Paris, 1967), p. xlviii.They were perennially
parodied,e.g. byVoltairein TheWhiteBull (1773-4) and byGeorgeMacDonald in the1860sand
Oscar Wilde in the 1890s:see J. Zipes, Fairy Talesand theArtofSubversion:The ClassicalGenre
for Childrenand theProcessof Civilization(London, 1983), 104-11, 114-21. Orwellmighthave
readWilde's parodyofthe 'happyending'(e.g. the'Star Child' becomesa good king,yet'ruled
he notlong... And he whocameafterhimruledevilly').JamesThurber,whomOrwelladmired
parodiedthe fablein Fablesfor Our Time(1940). In 'The Owl Who Was
(iii. 325), delightfully
God' Thurbertellshow birdsand beastscome to worshiptheowl as God because he can see in
thedark(assuminghe can see as wellin thedaytime)and becauseby luckhe answersquestions
correctly withthe fewmonosyllables he knows.Blindlyfollowinghim,theanimalsare hitby a
truckin broaddaylight, and many,includingtheowl,arekilled.Thurber'smoralis: 'You canfool
toomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime':VintageThurber, 2 vols. (London, 1983),i. 159.
42 Charles Dickens, 'Frauds on the Fairies' (1854), in MiscellaneousPapers/EdwinDrood
(London, n.d.), 202.
43 Quoted in H. Stone,Dickensand theInvisibleWorld:Fairy-Tales,Fantasyand Novel-Making
(New York, 1979),2.
774 PAUL KIRSCHNER
Dickenskepthis word.In 'Fraudson theFairies'he denounced'theintrusion

ofa WholeHog ofunwieldydimensionsintothefairyflowergarden',44 adding
a moralisticparodyof'Cinderella'.The sameyearhe used fairy-tale imagery in
Hard Timesto attackeducationaimedsolelyat grooming thepoorto servethe
rich.4"
Orwellmaywellhaveknown'Frauds on theFairies'.Duringa five-month
sanatoriumcure in 1938 he keptDickens's collectedworksin his room.46In
1947he himselfcontemplated a BBC versionof'Cinderella',callingit 'thetops
so faras fairytalesgo but ... toovisualto be suitablefortheair'.He imagined
Cinderellaas a wonderful singerunableto singin tune(nota bad self-parody),
and a godmotherwho cures her: 'One could make it quite comic withthe
wickedsisterssingingin screeching voices'(iv. 318-19). Orwell'sparodicidea
sprangfromtechnicalnecessities, buthe knewthatpastiche'usuallyimpliesa
realaffectionforthethingparodied'(iii. 193).Dickensparodiedan abuseofthe
fairytale.
Duringthe 1920sand 1930schildren'sstoriesin theWeimarRepublic,the
United States, and, to a lesser extent,England were again alteredby a
'proletarian'or 'left-wing' slantto counterclassicfairytalesseen as a tool of
bourgeoissocialization.47Orwellat firstthoughtofparticipating. In May 1940,
afterdenouncingright-wing bias in boys'stories,he wroteto RobertGeoffrey
Trease (author of a left-wingversion of Robin Hood): 'this matterof
intelligentfictionfor kids is very importantand I believe the time is
approachingwhen it mightbe possibleto do somethingabout it'. Orwell,
Trease recalled,had in mind
someLeftish
juvenile pinkinshade,perhaps
scheme,
publishing backedbytheT.U.C.
or the Liberal News Chronicle.Not havingread Homageto Catalonia,and being
unawareof his disenchantment
withthe official
Communist line,I did notfully
his
appreciate quipthat,ifLaurence
andWishart[Trease'sleft-wing didit,
publishers]
theywouldwantbookslike'boysoftheOgpu'or'The YoungLiquidators.'
Later Trease realized that 'perhapsOrwell's quip had helped-that false
historyfromthe Rightshouldnot be counteredwithfalsehistoryfromthe
Left'.48
WhetherOrwellfearedthatleft-wing
boys'storieswouldturnoutlikethe
communisttractquotedin his'Boys'Weeklies'
essay(i. 529),or whether
he
waschastened
by Frank Richards's
robust he
reply(i. 531-40),49 dropped the
44 'Frauds on theFairies',201.
45 See A. Bony, 'Realite et imaginairedans Hard Times',Etudesanglaises,23/2 (Apr.-June
1970), 168-82.
46 Crick,GeorgeOrwell,367. 47 See Zipes, FairyTalesand theArtofSubversion,
135-64.
48 G. Trease,A Whiff ofBurntBoats (London, 1971), 155,and Laughterat theDoor (London,
1974),26, 27. I thankNicholasTuckerforcallingmyattention toTrease and to TheAdventures
of
theLittlePig (see below).
49 Richardsviewedhappinessin youthas the best preparationforlatermisery:'At least,the
poor kidwill have had something!He may,at twenty, be huntingfora job and notfindingit-
in children's
idea and insteadpursuedhis interest literature
by adapting
Andersen's 'The Emperor's
New Clothes'fortheBBC in November 1943,
justbeforehe set out to counter'falsehistoryfromtheLeft' by stripping
the
USSR of its emperor'sclothesin AnimalFarm.
In doingso, he mayhave been partlyreactingin a Dickensianwayto left-
wingchildren'sstories.One I recallvividlyfrommyown childhoodwas the
titlestoryofa bookletbyHelen Kay (pseud.Helen ColodnyGoldfrank) called
The
BattleintheBarnyard.50 preface, 'To theChildrenofthe WorkingClass',
read:
Dear Comrades:
Once upona time,a longlongtimeago,a bookappearedcalled,'FairyTales for
Workers' Children.'Butthiswasa longtimeago,andthebookhassincerunoutof
print.
Now,we arestarting anew.I offerthisbookas a challenge-achallenge
to every
readerto writefor'Us Kids.'
These storieswerepennedwhenI was a 'Pioneer.'As a member of theYoung
PioneersofAmerica, book.Later,whenI cameto
I felttheneedofsucha children's
workwithyounger comrades, I evenmoreclearly
sawthedemandforsuchstories.
Today, the Pioneer movementis growing.. . . Farmers' childrenand kids of
unemployed parentsarerapidly joiningourranks.We mustfurnish themwithour
I amgladtomakethisstart.
literature.
All tellof theclass
Severalof thesestoriesdeal withrealand livingchildren.
Anoldercomrade
struggle. toldmesome.Everyonewaswritten foryou.I hopeyou'll
likethem.
Comradely yours,
HELEN KAY
Kay's prototypewas a collectionof German 'proletarian'fairytales by

HermyniaZur Mtihlen,translatedand publishedin Chicago by the Daily
WorkerPress in 1925,51and she saw herselfas marchingin the ranksof
revolutionary
history. 'An oldercomradetoldme
(Note herclaimto authority:
some'.) Paraphrase would not adequatelyconveythe spiritof her story.I
thereforegive it in full:
whyshouldhis fifteenth yearbe cloudedby worrying aboutthatin advance?He may,at thirty,

get the sack-why tell him so at twelve?'Makingchildrenmiserablewas unjustifiable anyway,
but 'the adult will be all the moremiserableif he was miserableas a child' (i. 537). Richards's
honestpatriotism, and affection
anti-intellectualism, forpre-1914Englandwouldhave appealed
to the authorof ComingupforAir.
50 New York: WorkersLibraryPublishers,1932.
51 Zipes, Fairy Talesand theArtofSubversion, birth,Zur Mtihlen(1883-
154-5. Of aristocratic
1951) studiedMarxismin Switzerlandand joinedtheCommunistPartyin Frankfurt-am-Main.
In 1933she emigrated to Viennaand in 1938fledto England.Her tales,aimedat raisingthesocial
consciousnessof childrenand offering themmodels of a fairerworld,appearedin communist
children'smagazinesduringthe 1920s:see J. Zipes (ed.), The OxfordCompanion to Fairy Tales,
(Oxford,2000), 561-2. Her firstcollection,Was Peterchens Freundeerzahlen(1921), is in the
BritishLibrary.
776 PAUL KIRSCHNER
Battlein theBarnyard
Out in thecountrywherethefieldsare greenand thesunshineis golden,an old farm
standsbetweentwo grovesof tallpoplartrees.On thisfarmtherelivedat one timea
happycolonyof healthychickens.
Now the yardwherethesechickenslivedwas filledwithveryfertilesoil. The rich
groundcontaineda plentifulamountof wormsupon whichthechickenslived.There
werelongskinnyworms,shortstubbyworms,and big fatworms.There wereas many
kindsof wormsas thereare people. Besides wormsa greatvarietyof caterpillars and
bugs helpedthesechickslead a healthywell-nourished life.
In a corneroftheyardwherethechickensscratchedawaytheirtimerana refreshing
spring.This springwas usedbythechickensto quenchtheirparchedthroatsin thehot
summerdays.
Many a happyday was passedby theseroostersand hens.The chickenswouldrise
withthe sun, scratchforworms,drinkwaterfromthe spring,cacklingand crowing
merrilyall the while.The hens would lay eggs-and thentell the worldabout it in
delight.
'Cut-cut-cut-ca-deh-cut!' theywouldcry.Justas iftheyweretrying to say,'I've laid
an egg,the loveliestwhiteegg!'
The littledownychickswouldplaytagand leapfrogbetweentheireatingtimes,to
whileawaythetimeuntiltheyin turnwouldgrowup and becomehensand roosters.
The cockswouldstrutaboutthefarmin theirconceitedmanner,crowingand asking
theworldifithad notnoticedtheirhandsomeplumage.'Cock-a-doodle-do!''Am I not
a handsomebird.Am I not. Am I not!'
Then at the settingof the sun the chickenfarmwould becomedarkand silent-
closed in theembraceof slumber.
On thisfarm,however,therewas one veryslyuglyrooster,whohad lostmostofhis
finefeathers in hisquarrelsand fights
withtheothermoresociableinmatesofthefarm.
He wouldalwaystakeadvantageoftheyoungchicks.Beinga verylazyfellowhe would
tryto getout of doinghis own scratching forworms.
For instance,whena youngercockwoulddigup a daintymorselfromtherichloam,
such as a livelyyoungearthworm, thisuglymonsterwouldimmediately pounceupon
his comrade'sdinnerand gobbleit all up. Yes, everysinglebit of it. This nastyhabit
made himverymuchhatedby all the otherson the farm.
One daytheentirecolonywas amazed.They werein factso astonishedat thesight
beforetheireyesthatwordsactuallyfailedthem.Even someofthemoretalkative hens
who alwayshad somethingto cackleabout,couldn'tfindtheirtongues.
Dear littlecomrades,it actuallywas an unusualsight,fortherebeforetheireyes,
theysaw forthe firsttimethis nastyroosterscratchingaway forworms!But what
surprisedthemeven more was thatthis greedycreaturedid not eat the wormshe
unearthed.He put themaway.As manywormsas he dug up he wouldlayin a pile on
the ground.
The inhabitants ofthecolonybecamenervous.Such a stateofaffairs wasimpossible.
They wereunableto understandit. Somethinghad to be done aboutit.
One eveningat the settingof the sun, a huge mass meetingwas called. It was
advertisedfarand wide by the youngcocks,who would perchthemselveson high
fencesand, flappingtheirwings,wouldcrowtheorderforthemeeting.
At thisgathering theroosterwas askedbythepatriarchs and industrious hensofthe
colony,whatthemeaningof the hugepile of wormsmeant[sic].
The roosterpromptly answered.'Here, I havea hugepileoftastybugs,catterpillars
THE DUAL PURPOSEOF ANIMALFARM 777
[sic],and worms.. .' He paused cleverlyto let theaudiencetakein thesight.'If you

willgiveme thecornerofthisyardwherethespringruns-and allowme to keepit all
to myself-I will giveyou in returnthathuge pile of food.'
Withoutfurtherthoughtthe chickencommunitydecided to do as the rooster
bargained.His foodwas evenlydividedamongall the membersof thevillageand in
returnhe receivedthatsectionof the yardwherethe cool springran.
The chickensgossipedamongthemselves-tellingeach otherhow stupidthe old
roosterwas to desirethatbitoflandin returnforthedeliciouspileofeatables.Afteran
houror so everyoneretiredforthenight.The sun setand thefarmwas darkand silent.
The nextmorningthechickensaroseas usual.The sun was up and shiningbrightly.
The day became veryhot and uncomfortable. The inmatesof the farmgrewvery
thirsty and as was theirhabittheystrolledover to the springto quenchtheirthirst.
However,as theycamewithinreachofthepreciouswater,themeanroosteraroseand
said:
'Cock-a-doodle-do!
This springdoes notbelongto you.
It's mine,you cannotdrinkhere!'
The thirsty chickensexclaimed,'What do you mean,yours!It is everyone's.'

The cockimmediately answered,'Didn't yousellitto me yesterdayin returnforthe
foodthatyou have alreadyeaten.'
A youngrebelliouscock criedout, 'But we are thirsty. You cannotkeep the water
fromus. We wishto drink.'
The roosterreplied,'For everydrinkofwaterthatyoutakeout ofmyspring,I will
in returntaketwoworms!'
Since thechickenswereverythirsty theyconsentedto thisarrangement.
The pile of wormswhichtheold miserlycockreapedfromthetoilof thechickens
beganto growby leaps and bounds.As a matterof factit grewso largethathe alone
could notcareforit. So he hiredtenofthestrongest youngroosterson thefarmto be
his policemen.
Their job was to take care of and to protecthis hoard of worms.In return,he
promisedto give themenoughwaterand foodto live on, no morenor no less. No
less-because he had to have stronghuskywell-nourished policemento takecare of
and guardthesurplusthathe now livedupon.He wouldgivethemno more-because
thiswickedroosterwantedmoreand moreforhimself.
wenton fora longtime.The chickencolonylostitsusual happy
This stateofaffairs
satisfiedexpression.They did not crow as joyouslyas theydid before.The young
chickenswere afraidto be merry.They were underfedand undernourished. They
could no longerplay withoutfearof disturbingthe selfishcock. The hens could no
longerlay good eggs,becausetheylackedfood,and entertainment. They now had to
laborfromsunriseto sunsetso thattheycouldhaveenoughfoodto liveon,and enough
foodto giveto thecruelroosterin returnforthewaterthattheyso badlyneeded.
The chickswho werebornduringthisperiodweregenerallynotstrongenoughto
live. Most of themdied and the tragicpartwas thatthosewho did survivetookthe
conditionthatnow existedforgranted.They thoughtit was impossibleto live any
otherway.
On theotherhandtheroostergrewbiggerand fatter. His daughteralso grewbigger
and fatter.Neitherhad to work.They merelyateand playedall day.They livedoffthe
toiland sweatof theirfellowchicks.
778 PAUL KIRSCHNER
Now, on the farmtherewas a duck,a veryhandsomegracefulduck. He would

waddleand quackall throughthechickenfarm.One daytheroosterdecidedto marry
his daughterto theduck,in orderthatshe wouldbecomea duchess,and so be one of
the nobility.
The roosterwentup to theduckand said,'If youmarrymydaughter,and so make
hera duchess,I willgiveyoua shareofmygroundsand makeyoua partnerinmyfood
association.You willnothavetoscratchforyourworms,butwillliveoffthewormsthat
theotherchickensscratchup. You willlead a lifeof luxuryand play,ifyou do this.'
The duckagreed.And so theyweremarried.They had littlearistocratic duck-chicks
bornto lead livesof idleness.
One day one of theroosterswas tiredof feedingthemean cock,and goinghungry
himself.He ranup singlehandedto theold miserand startedto fighthim.Of course,
he was immediately killedbythepolice.This incidentaddedto thesuffering and to the
downtrodden conditionsoftheotherchickens.But theyalwaysremembered thebrave
young cock.
Soon afterthisoccurred,theuglymisergotanotheridea. He calledoversomemore
chickens.He toldthemthathe wouldpaythemmorethanthepolicemaniftheywould
act as preachers.
'Your duty,'he said,'is totellthechickensto be submissiveandobeyme,theapostle
of the lordin the heavensabove. If theyare submissiveand do everything I and my
family order them to do, when die
they they will go to heaven, and therelead happy
lives.But, if theyrebeltheywill go down to thefiresof hell and burnforever.The
hardertheyworkhereon earth,thebettertimetheywill have in heaven.'
As timewenton thechickensslavedharderand harder,and theroostergrewricher
and richer.They began to believewhateverthe preacherchickenstold them.They
thoughtthat conditionsmust alwaysbe as theyare. That the greateramountof
chickensshouldbe poorand thata privilegedfewmustliveoffthewealththatthepoor
chickensscratchedup.
One youngand energetic cockwhowas deeplyimpressedbyall thegoingson,began
to think.He thoughtand planned,and othershelpedhim.Then theyall decidedthat
theonlywayto savethechickensofthefarm,and themselves, fromendlessslaverywas
bydrivingouttheselfishrooster, hisdaughter,theduchess,herhusband,theduck,and
the aristocratic duck-chicks, also theirprotectors,the policemen,and especiallythe
preachers.
Secretleafletswereprintedand spreadoverthecolonyforthechickensto readandto
learn the truth.Huge mass meetingswere called and the exploitedchicks were
organizedintobattalionsto driveout theiroppressors.
The chickencolonywas in a stateof excitement. If theywon thebattletheywould
againbe freechickens.If theylost-no one wantedto thinkof that.They mustwin.
And dearlittlecomrades,theydid win.They certainly werevictorious.They drove
theold roosterand hisprotectors outoftheirlivesforever. The meancockand his lazy
good-for-nothing familywerekilled.The preachersand policemenfledfromthefarm.
No one has everheardof themsince.Perhapsthe wolvesate them.
Now in the summerwhenthe fieldsare greenand the sunshineis goldenin the
country youcansee thehenshappilylayingeggs,andtheotherchickensscratching away
forworms.They havelearnedtheirlesson,and neveragainwillanyonebe able to trick
themintoslavery.The littlechicksplaytagand leap-frog in theirmerryway.You can
hearthemgo 'Peep-peep-peep!'The roostersstrutaroundthefarmand crow,'Cock-a-
doodle-do!'The henscry,'Cluck-cluck-cluck!' They are all contentedand equal.
As faras I know,the onlyextantcopy of Kay's bookletis in Harvard's

WiednerLibrary.A studentof mine52tracedit forme twenty-five yearsago:
otherlibraries,he said, had 'removed'it duringSenatorJoe McCarthy's
inquisition.On a falleveningin 1995I visitedtheWiednerand askedto see it.
A guard,happilywaivingtherules,tookme downto thestacks,and thereit
was,itssoftbrownand buffcoveras I had lastseen it welloverhalfa century
beforein the guestloungeof a holidaycamp patronizedby skilledlow-paid
workers.It was then(likemyself)nineor tenyearsold, but stillcirculating.
Like Combrayfroma teacup,a bygonehopefulethosrose beforemymental
visionas I leafedthroughKay's stories-'Bread', 'High Hat Ants', 'Strike
Secret'-and saw whathad worriedlibrarians.In one story,'Us AlleyKids',
blackand whitechildrendefying JimCrow organizedthepoor ofbothraces
againstexploitation: a threatthatnearlymaterializedthirtyyearslaterin the
last,'integrated' marchMartinLutherKing was planningat thetimehe was
murdered.By thenWorkersLibraryPublisherswas longextinct.53 Today,the
premiseof Battlein theBarnyardis obsolete.As a FinancialTimesjournalist
sanguinelyremarked:'Long considereda basic right,wateris now being
lookedat as a goodinvestment.'54 The word'Comrade'(whichOrwellthought
off
putpeople socialism) needn'tbe banned,as itfinally
is on AnimalFarm,for
thereis littleriskofitsuse betweenmembersofcontending national,religious,
ethnic,linguistic, or sexualinterest
groups.In thenewRussia theSong ofthe
VolgaBusinessmanproclaimstheblessingsbroughtto workers and pensioners
by Soviet apparatchiks turned freebooting
capitalists-giving Orwell's ending
a propheticresonancemissingfromKay's.55
Yet, despitesuch progress,few'greatbooks' I have read since childhood
haveleftme withas vivida memoryas Kay's,downto thecoverdrawingofthe
routofthemiserlyroosterand his clan. That factseemsto me relevantto the
enduringpowerofAnimalFarm.The secretofKay's impacton me as a child
52 RogerWebster.
53 I have triedunsuccessfully
to traceKay or anothercopyright-holder.
54 A. Mandel-Campbell,'Water could make yourcup runnethover', Financial Times,16-17
Feb. 2002, 'Weekend' section,p. xxii. Privatefirmshave acquired 85% of the world'swater
distribution(UBS Investment,July/Aug.2001, p. 23). AlthoughNGOs arguethatprivatization
strikesthepoorestand thatwateraccessshouldbe freeor chargedat costprice,theWorldWater
Forumdoes notrecognizewateras a 'basic humanright'.The WorldCommissionon Water,an
armoftheWorldBank,considersita profitable resource,especiallyin poorcountries(Le Monde,
24 Mar. 2000,p. 40). Fromtheboardroomthislooksideal.If regulators menaceprofits,firmscan
invokejob losses. On the otherhand,CEOs who boostthesharepriceby sackingworkersearn
biggerbonuses,and if theyhave to be sackedin turntheyare replaced,as in Orwell'sday,by
otherslike themselves,but rewardedfortheirfailurebeyondthe wildestdreamsof Orwell's
contemporaries.Privatization,however,sparksconflict.VivendiEnvironment was drivenout of
Tucuman Province,Argentina(International Herald Tribune,27 Aug. 2002, p. 1). Anotherfirm
doubledthewaterpricein Bolivia,provoking whathas beencalledtheworld'sfirstcivilwarover
water(Le Point,30 Aug. 2002, p. 87). Kay's far-fetchedmetaphoris today'sfait divers.
55 'Whilemillionsoftheircountrymen sufferedcollapsinglivingstandards,declininghealthand
increasingalcoholism,a few [Russians]made enoughmoneyto join the ranksof the world's
richestmen' (FinancialTimes,6/7 Apr. 2002, p. I).
780 PAUL KIRSCHNER
laynotin contentbutin form.Max Frischonce ascribedthepeculiarforceof

marionettes to the factthat,unlikeactors,theydon't have to 'makebelieve',
but are bodied forthas nakedcreationsof the spirit."6 Animalsrepresenting
humansoperatesimiliarly.17Like 'Battlein theBarnyard', AnimalFarmgains
forcefromelementsof the fableand themagicfolktale whilecorresponding
strictlyto neither.Orwell's storystructurally mirrorsKay's. Kay's idyllic
prelude closed a
by peacefulnight's slumber precedesthe insidiousriseof a
selfishcapitalisttyrant,ultimately
provoking revoltand a return
conspiratorial
to theidyllicstatusquo ante.Orwell'sparodicutopianpreludeis also followed
by a peacefulnight'ssleep,but thenby conspiracyand a rebellionpavingthe
way forthe insidiousrise of a collectivist,ideologicaltyrantand even more
hopelessoppression.Kay faresless well than Orwell in fusingartisticand
politicalpurpose. Beneath the communist catchwords,her nostalgiafor a
happystateofnatureis closerto Rousseauthanto Marxor Lenin,farfromthe
open-endedstoriesof Zur Miihlen,whomshe claimedas a model.58" Never-
theless,thekinshipbetweenOrwell'sstoryand Kay's is obvious:thecollective
protagonist, the gradualhabituation to oppression,theword'Comrade'used
seductivelyby Kay, ironicallyby Orwell,and the calculatedslippagefrom
symbolicto directstatement(havingestablishedthe youngroostersas the
miser'spolicemenKay can say thatthe hungryroosterwas 'killed by the
police';Orwell,afterhavingNapoleon'sdogsripouttheyoungpigs'throatsin
a metaphorconveyingforcedconfessionand execution,can creditNapoleon
withthe cry 'Death to humanity').Both storiesuse preachersand private
police,Orwell'smoresubtly.WhenNapoleon'sprivatearmyofdogswagtheir
tailsto theirmaster,theyremindus thata dog is Man's bestfriend.Andwhen
the preachingravenMoses, initiallychasedoffthe farm,laterreappears,the
pigstoleratehim,evengivinghima dailygillofbeer,as ifto say'Stickaround,
youmaybe needed.'This hasbeentakento symbolizeStalin'swartime entente
withtheOrthodoxChurch;moregenerally itreflects
thepotentialconvenience
ofreligionto dictators(Hitlerviewedhis concordatwiththeCatholicChurch
as propitiousforhis waron Jews).59Finally,ifOrwelland Kay bothplayon
words,Kay's duck-duchessand hens that'alwayshad somethingto cackle
about' seem frivolous,whereasOrwell's ham-burialhas dramaticpoint.In
bothstoriesthekeywordis 'equal', but Orwell'sturnsit upsidedown.
56 Max Frisch,'Uber Marionetten', in Tagebuch1946-1949(Zurich,1964), 154.

57 The Parisiancrazeforfablesand literary contesdefeesin thelate 17thcenturycoincidedwith
one formarionettes (see Contesde Perrault,ed. Rouger,293 n. 2). Perraulthimselfmade the
'Qu'en certainsmomentsl'espritle plus parfaitI
connection;dedicating'Peau d'ine' he affirmed,
Peut aimersans rougirjusqu'aux Marionettes'.(ibid. 57.) The mostsensibleReason,he added,
oftenweariedof its vigiland enjoyeddozing,ingeniouslyrockedby talesof Ogre and Fairy.
58 See Zipes, Fairy Tales and theArtofSubversion, 154-5.
59 See J.-D. Jurgensen,Orwell,ou la Routede 1984 (Paris, 1983), 154,and J. Cornwell,Hitler's
Pope (London, 1999), 151 ff.
V
Despite, or because of, theirdifferences,the familylikenessbetweenKay's
story and Orwell'smakes Animal Farm look likeliteraryparody.Was parody
intended?In 1946 Orwell recognized,'I am not able, and I do not want,
completelyto abandonthe world-viewthatI acquiredin childhood(i. 28).
Magic tales,althoughescapist,werepartof thatworld-view.In 1947,while
contemplating a parodyof 'Cinderella'and hopingfora re-broadcast of 'The
Emperor's New Clothes',Orwell to
agreed adapt 'LittleRed Riding Hood' for
theBBC's Children's Hour.Like Dickens,he wouldprobablyhaveresentedthe
abuseoffairytalesforpropaganda,whichhe detested.60 Withhispenchantfor
parody,he mightwellhaveregardedAnimalFarm,once written, as a pastiche
of left-wing children'sliterature.
Whetherhe intendedit as such is moreconjectural.There is no evidence
thathe knewof Kay or Zur Miihlen,whose storieswere not publishedin
England.On theotherhand,foran omnivorous readerwithcosmopolitan left-
wingcontacts61 in
and a specialinterest 'proletarian' literature
and ephemeral
writing-whohad workedin 1934-5 in a Hampsteadsecond-handbookshop
doing'a good deal ofbusinessin children'sbooks. . . ratherhorriblethings'
(i. 274),-nothingcan be quiteruledout. In anycase Orwellcouldhaveseena
mild strainof left-wingchildren'sliteraturein the CooperativeUnion's
'CooperativeBooks forYoung People': 'fairyplays' and storiesenvisaging
factories whereno workerwas eversackedowingto bad trade.62 In 1937,the
60 See P. Davison,ed. TheComplete WorksofGeorgeOrwell(London, 1998),viii.116.According

to GeorgeWoodcock,OrwelljustifiedworkingfortheBBC 'by contending thattherightkindof
man could at leastmakepropagandaa littlecleanerthanit wouldotherwisehavebeen . .. buthe
soon foundtherewas in factlittlehe could do, and he lefttheBBC in disgust'(quoted in Crick,
GeorgeOrwell,418). (In NineteenEighty-Four OrwellnamedtheParty'storturechamber,Room
101,aftera BBC conference room.)For Orwell,a propagandist aimednotat truthbut 'to do as
muchdirton his opponentas possible'(iii. 262). Propagandatook'just as muchworkas to write
somethingyoubelievein,withthedifference thatthefinishedproductis worthless(iii. 293). Yet
he madeone exception:'I havealwaysmaintainedthateveryartistis a propagandist. I don'tmean
a politicalpropagandist.If he has any honestyor talentat all he cannotbe that.Most political
propagandais a matterof tellinglies,notonlyaboutthe factsbut aboutyourown feelings.But
everyartistis a propagandistin the sense thathe is trying,directlyor indirectly,to imposea
visionof lifethatseemsto him desirable'(ii. 57). In AnimalFarmOrwelldoes thisby exposing
the betrayalof such a vision.
61 Orwellcontributed to PartisanReviewfrom1941 to 1946,and praisedDwightMacdonald's
reviewPolitics.By 1944 he had the New York addressof RuthFischer(pseud. ElfriedeEisler,
1895-1961),the one-timeGeneral Secretaryof the GermanCommunistPartyand authorof
Stalinand GermanCommunism (iii. 334). Her hatredof Stalin-she neverlostheradmiration
for
Lenin-led her to denounceher brotherGerhartas an agentof the Comintern,and her other
brother,the composerHanns Eisler, as a communist'in a philosophicalsense' to the Un-
AmericanActivitiesCommitteein 1947; thiseventuallyled, in 1948,to Eisler'sexpulsionfrom
the United States:E. Bentley(ed.), ThirtyYearsof Treason(London, 1971), 55 ff.,73. Among
Orwell's papers in the BritishLibraryis a manuscripttranslationof a German socialist's
eyewitness accountofthefallofBerlin,otherversionsofwhichappearedin Fischer'snewsletter
'The Network'(Nov.-Dec. 1945) and in Politics(Jan. 1946). FischervisitedOrwellon 17 June
1949 (iv. 565; confirmedto me by PeterDavison).
62 For example,J. R. Carling,Each forAll: A Fairy Play in ThreeScenes(1923); Winifred
782 PAUL KIRSCHNER
yearin whichOrwellsaid he firstthoughtof AnimalFarm,Gollancz'sLeft

Book Club publishedboth TheRoad to WiganPierand a left-wing children's
book, The Adventures oftheLittle Pig and OtherStories
by F. Le Gros and Ida
Clark.63Gollanczmayhave planteda seed.64
Orwell'spoliticalopinionswere,besides,hardlyoriginal.Some had been
inscribedin literaryhistoryby thatversatilefemmede lettresand nostalgic
historianof rural mannersGeorge Sand during the revolutionof 1848.
Privately,Sand declaredherselfcommunist
as peoplewereChristianintheyear50 ofourera.Formeitis theidealofadvancing
thatwilllivea fewcenturies
thereligion
societies, hence.ThusI cannot be tiedbyany
ofthepresentcommunist formulas,since allarerather
dictatorial
and thinktheycanbe
setup withouttheaidofmorals, habitsandconvictions. No religion
is established
by
force.
Publicly,she denouncedelectionsorganizedin May 1848 against'chimerical

communists':
Ifbycommunism
youmeana conspiracy
readytotrya grabfordictatorship
... weare
notcommunists.... But if,by communism,
youmeanthedesireand thewillthat,by
all meanslawfuland admitted
bythepublicconscience,
therevolting of
inequality
extremewealthandextreme should
poverty herebyvanishto makeway forthestart
of
yes,wearecommunists
trueequality, anddaretotellyouso.65
Like Orwell,she wanteda revolutionpreserving 'commondecency'.
Nor was Orwell alone on the leftin condemningRussian communism.
Whateverthe seeds of AnimalFarm theywereencouragedto sproutby an
anarchistpamphletin his collection:The RussianMyth.66"
AlthoughGeorge
Young, Cloudsand Sunshine:A FairyPlay (1922); L. F. Ramsey,Fairiesto theRescue,a Fairy

Play (1926). H. B. Chipman,Meri-ka-chak:A Children's BookletwhichCarriestheCo-operative
Message(n.d.); F. M. Campling,It's Different
Now: A Yarnfor YoungPeople(1939). Some arein
the BritishLibrary;othersare in the Co-operativeUnion Library,HolyoakeHouse, Hanover,
Manchester,or appearedin its sales catalogue.
63 In the firsttwo stories,a 'kindlyrobber'givesthe littlepig forChristmasa silvernecklace
stolenfroma fatduchess.He tellsthe pig to giveit to his mother,who complainsshe owes the
farmerback rent:
'He's a cruelmeanman.He does no work,and makesall theanimalspayrent.The horsehas to
payrentnow forhis stablesand thefowlsfortheirhen-house,and thecowsforthecow-shed.'
'Good heavens,'said the littlepig. 'But wheredo theyget themoneyfrom?'
His motherbeganto weep bitterly. 'It's veryhard,'she said. 'The fowlshave to taketheir
eggs to marketto raisethe moneyand the cows have to taketheirmilkand the horsehas to
carryloads to and froforthe neighbours.'(p. 28)
64 There wereprobablyothers.Trotsky'sTheRevolution Betrayed(1937) mayhave suggested

thesubject,and evenan anglefromwhichto treatit. Describingforcedcollectivization,
Trotsky
writes,'But themostdevastating
hurricanehittheanimalkingdom.The numberofhorsesfell55
per cent . . .' (p. 40).
65 Quoted in AndreMaurois,Lilia, ou la viede GeorgeSand (Verviers,Belgium,1952),372,382
(my translation).
66 London: FreedomPress, 1941.
Woodcockcaughthimout on thetitle,Orwellcalledit 'a terrific and veryable
anti-Sovietpamphlet'(ii. 210, 259). The coverread:
To Communists andothers, criticismoftheRussianpolitical andeconomic systemis
taboo.According tothem, is tobetray
tocriticise the'Worker's State'andplayintothe
handsofthecapitalistclass.
Butin thispamphlet weaskthequestion: is Russiaa Socialistcountry?...
Ifwedefine a Socialist
StateorCountry as oneinwhichinequality is abolished
and
whereeconomic and politicalfreedom exist,thenit canbe conclusively shownthat
noneofthesepre-requisites existin Russiatoday.By clinging to theirillusions;
by
lookingto theRussianregime as thegoaloftheBritish workers; andbystubbornly
tofacethefacts,
refusing theCommunist rankandfile,however sinceretheymaybein
aremisleading
theirbeliefs, theworkers ofthiscountry.
The Russian Myth anticipated the premise of Animal Farm:
Bolshevisttactics
wherevertheyareappliedwillalwaysleadnottotheemancipationof
theworkers from thechainswhichnowenslavethem,noreventothedictatorship of
theproletariat.
They lead to
inevitably theabsoluteor state.
totalitarian By allowing
powerovertheinstruments ofproductiontopassoutoftheir ownhandsintothoseofa
so-calledrevolutionary
government,theworkers buta slavery
willachievenotliberty
as badorworsethanthattheysoughttoescapefrom.67
It distinguishedtruesocialismfromwhattheBolshevikshad established:
ofindustry
ofMarxism...urgeStatecontrol
Thepropagandists as the
andagriculture
ButAnarchists
aimofrevolution. regards as
socialism the the
emancipation
of workers
fromall theforceswhich ... To overthrow
freedevelopment.
fetter privatecapitalismonly
Statecapitalism
to enthrone to theblindest
in its placewillonlyappearprogress
ofutopiangradualism.68
devotees
ThreeyearsearlierOrwellhad asked,'Is [Stalin'sregime]Socialism,or is it
(i. 369). But he did nottakethe
a peculiarlyviciousformofstate-capitalism?'
anarchistlinethatthecall to defendtheUSSR 'madebytheCommunists, and
echoedby Churchilland Roosevelt'was a call 'to defendtherulingclique in
Russia':
Britishand American imperialists in commonwiththe soviet
have no interests
workers. The onlywayto aid theRussianworkers is to fight the
unremittingly
.... the
aloneprovides
classstruggleherein England.Similarly,
revolutionary
struggle
onlymeansofdestroying German NazismandFascism.Onlybyfighting fortheworld
revolutioncan theworkerseverywhereachievefreedom from tyranny
poverty, and
wars.. .69
In 1938Orwellhimselfhad calledtheslogan'Guns beforebutter!'a dodgeto

denywage rises:theworkers'realenemieswere'thosewho tryto trickthem
into identifying their interestswith those of their exploiters,and into
forgetting whateverymanualworkerinwardlyknows-thatmodernwaris a
racket'(i. 368). But whenthebombscamehe putfirstthingsfirst.By 1940he
was 'attackingpacifismforall [he] was worth'(ii. 34), and in 1941 he noted:
67 TheRussianMyth,26. 68 Ibid. 28-9. 69 Ibid. 30.
784 PAUL KIRSCHNER
'The most interestingdevelopmentof the anti-warfronthas been the

interpretation [sic-a misprintfor 'interpenetration': see PartisanReview,
8/1 (March-April1941), 109] of the pacifistmovementby Fascist ideas,
especiallyantisemitism' (ii. 69).
Orwell'smoralforcewas his politicalindependence:his denunciation, in
windowpane-clear prose, of both privatecapitalismwith itsmoney-based class
privilegeand 'the shallowself-righteousness of the left-wingintelligentsia'(i.
587) holdingup thetrainof theUSSR's emperor'srobes.Orwell'shatredof
propagandamakesit all themoreironicthat,withinthreeyearsof his death,
the CIA and the ForeignOfficedistributed doctoredversionsof his master-
piece. A cartoonfilmvettedby the CIA's PsychologicalStrategyBoard
suppressedthe closingparallelbetweencapitalistand porcineexploitation.
In the CIA's happy endinga counter-revolution deposed the pigs.70The
ForeignOfficecirculateda comicstripin whichOld Major resembledLenin.71
That Orwellshouldhave had his purposetamperedwithin thenameof the
'freeworld'to shielda systemforwhichhe saw 'manifestly no future'(iv. 429)
is, of course,disgusting.Yet AnimalFarm only halffulfilled thatpurpose,
since the pathos of the failureof a specificrevolutionimpliesa general
statementabout the impossibility of any revolution.This derivesnot from
latentconservatism or a sourchangeof politicalcolours,72 but fromthevery
literaryformthatmakesAnimalFarmwhatEdmundWilsononcecalled'long-
rangeliterature'. Preserving 'thesymmetry ofthestory'meantsynopsizing the
oppression of the animals and on
parodically focusing betrayal of their hopes
aftertheRebellion.Hence thefinalmetamorphosis of thepigsmaybe readas
just a partingshotat them,not necessarilyas a backhanderat capitalismas
well. A seriousaccountof hardshipsbeforethe Rebellion,whilestillmain-
tainingthelinkbetweenorganizingintelligence and ravenouspower-hunger,
would merelyhave dividedthe interest.But if,as the parablesuggests,the
alternativeto privatecapitalismis 'Animalism', thenbetterthedevilyouknow.
Orwell'sconvictionthatcapitalismwas deservedlydoomedwas occultedby
70 See F. S. Saunders,WhoPaid thePiper?TheCIA and theCulturalCold War(London, 1999),

293-5. Saundersremarks,'Curiously,the critiqueof America'sintelligence bureaucratsechoed
theearlierconcernsofT. S. Eliot and WilliamEmpson,bothof whomhad writtento Orwellin
1944 [sic]to pointout faultsor inconsistencies
in the centralparableofAnimalFarm.' Orwell's
own 1946BBC versionkeepsthelastlineand praiseofmoreworkforless food.Fredericis gone,
and 'Farmer 1', who drops his aitches while Napoleon speaks like a gentleman,replaces
Pilkington,thus audiblyconfusingpigs and humans:see P. Davison, The CompleteWorksof
GeorgeOrwell,viii. 192.
71 See Guardian,17 Mar. 1998,p. 7.
72 Three monthsafterthepublicationofAnimalFarmOrwellsnubbedan invitation to speakon
YugoslaviafortheLeague ofEuropeanFreedombecauseit was 'an essentially Conservative body
whichclaimsto defenddemocracyin Europe but has nothingto say aboutBritishimperialism'.
He explained: 'I belong to the Left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian
totalitarianismand its poisonousinfluencein thiscountry'(iv. 49). Simon Leys deplores'the
persistentstupidityof a Left that,insteadof at lastbeginningto readand understand[Orwell]
had scandalouslypermitted theconfiscationofitsmostpowerfulwriter':Orwell,ou l'horreurde la
politique(Paris, 1984),46 (mytranslation).
thedesignofAnimalFarm,which,whileraisingit to thelevelofmoralsatire,
simultaneously made it near-perfect materialforpropagandists of the status
quo.
If literaryformhinderedOrwell'spoliticalpurpose,it also confirmed the
existenceofliteraturestripped of theories.In declaring thathe had no fearofa
dictatorshipof the proletariatbut a 'perfecthorrorof a dictatorshipof
theorists'Orwell affirmedhis faithboth in the moral code of ordinary
people and in literature.If the dominanttheoristsof his day have withered,
othersnow proliferate.They suggestthat, since words do not perfectly
representreality,theycan mean whateveryou choose, with the corollary
that searchingforobjectivetruth(and backingargumentsby evidence)is
pointless.The onlycriterionof truthbecomespower,withcarteblancheto
anyonewho can wield it. Otherstheorizethat,sincereadingand writingare
conditionedby sex, criticalstandardsshould differfor male and female
authors.Imagination, once used to transcendsexualbarriers,is expectedto
raise them. In the politicaland economicsphere,theoristsproclaimthat
civilizationhas reachedits ultimateperfectionin unfettered capitalism,as
Hegel thoughtit had in thestate,whileothers'deconstruct'literature intoan
expressionof Westernracismand imperialism.The fairytale is again a
battlefieldforpolitical,sociological,and psychological theorists"heedlessof
thegrimadmissionbya famouspoliticalexilewhomOrwellreadwithinterest:
'Theory is not a note whichyou can presentat any momentto realityfor
payment.'"
Alongwiththestifling effect
of totalitarianismon literature(ii. 163,iv. 88)
one of Orwell'sbugbearswas the 'invasionof literature by politics'(iv. 464).
Socialistshad no monopolyof mentaldishonesty. Rather,
acceptance ofanypolitical seemstobe incompatible
discipline withliteraryintegrity.
Thisappliesequallytomovements likePacifismandPersonalism, whichclaimtobe
73 See Zipes,FairyTalesandtheArtofSubversion, 60 ff.,179ff.Zur Mtihlenwasrediscovered in

Germanyin the 1960s,starting a waveof 'counter-cultural' children'stalesadvocatingcollective
controlby workersof theirlabour.Englandand theUnitedStatespreferred feminist fairytales.
Zipes, who has editeda volumeofthem(Don't Bet onthePrince(London, 1986)), welcomesthe
'upsetting'effectof makingCinderellarebellious,or havingSnow Whiteorganizinga band of
robbers.Mercifully, however,he grantsthat'it is extremely difficult
to determineexactlywhata
childwillabsorbon an unconsciouslevel' (Fairy Talesand theArtofSubversion, 191,57). Orwell
himselfhas drawnfeminist fire,the chargebeing'not thathe treatedwomenbadlybut thathe
portrayed thembadly.In his novels,the femalecharacters(includingthemarein AnimalFarm)
are sketchyor vapid' (D. Honigmann,FinancialTimes,1-2 June2000, 'Weekend'section,p. v).
If Comrade Orwell wrongedFeministWoman, feministsmightrecall Eileen Blair's part in
AnimalFarm.Eileen toldhow,unprecedentedly, herhusbandwouldreadhis day's workto her
and welcomeher criticisms and suggestions(Crick,GeorgeOrwell,451). Her friendsattributed
the humourin thebook to her influence(Shelden, TheAuthorised Biography, 408), and Orwell
said thatshe had helpedin planningit (iv. 131). Significantly,he askedher advice,perhapsto
help himcapturewhathe called in a broadcast'the atmosphere of childhood'(The Lost Writings,
ed. West,88). She maydeservecreditforthetoneofthebook,includingsuchhumoroustouches
as themare's frivolousvanity.
74 TheRevolution Betrayed,109.
786 PAUL KIRSCHNER
outside
theordinarypolitical Indeed,themeresoundofwordsending
struggle. in-ism
seemstobringthesmellofpropaganda. arenecessary,
Grouployalties andyettheyare
to literature,
poisonous so longas literature
is theproduct
ofindividuals.
(iv.468)
Since bothleftand righthavetriedto annexAnimalFarm,it is timeliterature
putin itsclaim.Totalitarianism mayseemlessofa threatthanin Orwell'sday,
but witha firmcalled'Narration,Ltd' recruiting authorsto writepropaganda
novels 'sponsored'by governments and companies,75 the literarynatureof
AnimalFarmneedsaffirming. Its politicalambiguities are irresolvable,but its
universalmoral satire emergesmore stronglyas the USSR fades from
memory.In China, wherethe CommunistPartyhas pragmatically equated
privateentrepreneurs with workersas a 'productiveforce'in an effortto
broadenits sociologicalbase (as Orwelltold socialiststo do in The Road to
WiganPier),AnimalFarmis unlikelyto be takeneitheras a redundantattack
on a defunctUSSR or as an endorsement ofa capitaliststatusquo, butsimply
as a warningagainstpower-seekers wieldingthejargonof theoryto establish
tyranny.76To Orwell,whodefineda realsocialistas 'one whowishes. . . to see
tyrannyoverthrown',77this would have seemed a good symptom.In our
theory-bemused West,however,thecontradictions ofAnimalFarmmaybest
be circumvented by reading it as literarycounter-parody in the perennial
struggle forthe power to enchant. In his pasticheof a left-wing'fairystory',
Orwellfusedartisticand politicalpurposeto chasea twentieth-century Whole
Hog out of theflowergardenof children'sliterature.
Geneva
75 Independent on Sunday,1 Sept. 2002, p. 10.

76 The director-adapter ShangChengjunwasnecessarily morediplomatic.His playopenednear
the Great Hall of the People in Beijing,wherethe CommunistPartyhad just electedits new
leaderswithall therigidconformism ofAnimalFarm.Mr Shangknewtheymightstophis play,
but his commentwas apt: 'Many people read the book narrow-mindedly ... Sure, [it] satirises
the Soviet Union, but I thinkthe phenomenonit describessuitseverysocietyand era. I don't
wantto makea judgmentin thisplay-whethersocialismor capitalismis good or not. WhatI
wantto expressis thatno matterwhichsocietypeoplearein, iftheywantto be theirownmasters
theyhave responsibilities and duties.If theyare indifferent,
lazy and don't wantto vote,any
social systemwill fail'(FinancialTimes,16/17 Nov. 2002, p. 3). In Orwell'swords,thepeople
mustknowwhento chuckout theirleaders-but whatiftheylose faithin theefficacy ofvoting?
77 TheRoad to WiganPier (Harmondsworth, 1963), 194.
Revolution on Animal Farm: Orwell's Neglected Commentary
Author(s): V. C. Letemendia
Source: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 127-137
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831551
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http://www.jstor.org
\.C. LETEMENDIA
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
Revolution on Animal Farm:
Orwell's Neglected Commentary
IN THE LAST SCENE OF GEORGE

ORWELL'S "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, whom they originally fought to overthrow.1 The animals' fate seems to
mirror rather closely that of the common people as Orwell envisaged it some six years
before commencing Animal Farm: "what you get over and over again is a movement of
the proletariat which is promptly canalized and betrayed by astute people at the top, and
then the growth of a new governing class. The one thing that never arrives is equality.
The mass of the people never get the chance to bring their innate decency into the control
of affairs, so that one is almost driven to the cynical thought that men are only decent
when they are powerless."2 Obviously Animal Farm was designed to parody the
betrayal of Socialist ideals by the Soviet regime. Yet it has also been interpreted by
various readers as expressing Orwell's own disillusion with any form of revolutionary
political change and, by others, as unfolding such a meaning even without its author's
conscious intention. It is time now to challenge both of these views.
Orwell himself commented of Animal Farm that "if it does not speak for itself,
it is a failure."3 The text does indeed stand alone to reveal Orwell's consistent belief not
only in democratic Socialism, but in the possibility of a democratic Socialist revolution,
but there is also a considerable body of evidence outside Animal Farm that can be shown
to corroborate this interpretation. The series of events surrounding its publication, and
Orwell's own consistent attitude towards his book provide evidence of its political
1
George Orwell, Animal Farm (Harcourt Brace, 1946), p. 118. Further references to the text
are to this edition and are given parenthetically.
2
Sonia Orwell and lan Angus, eds., The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George
Orwell (Penguin, 1971), Vol. I, p. 372. (This four-volume collection will be referred to
henceforth as CEJL). Even when Orwell wrote this, in deep distress after his experience of the
Spanish Civil War, he was not completely pessimistic, as he remarked with some surprise: see
Homage to Catalonia (Penguin, 1984), p. 220.
3
CEJL, HI, p. 459.
V.C. Letemendia, "Revolution on Animal Farm: Orwell's Neglected Commentary."

Journal of Modern Literature, XVIII: 1 (Winter 1992), pp. 127-137. ?1994
Temple University.
128 V.C. LETEMENDIA
meaning.4 Meanwhile, of the two extant prefaces written by Orwell, the one designed
for the Ukrainian edition, composed in 1947, is of particular political interest.5 Orwell's
correspondence with his friends and acquaintances on the subject of Animal Farm
provides a further source of information. Some of these letters are well known to Orwell
scholars, but his correspondence with Dwight Macdonald, with whom he became friends
when he was writing for the American journal, Partisan Review, does not appear to have
been fully investigated. Macdonald himself raised a direct question about the political
intent of Animal Farm and was given a specific answer by Orwell, yet this fascinating
evidence has apparently been neglected, in spite of the generous access now available to
his correspondence in the Orwell Archive.6
Commentators on Orwell find it easy to conclude from Animal Farm the utter
despair and pessimism either of its author, or of the tale itself.7 It must be remembered,
however, that through his allegory Orwell plays a two-sided game with his reader. In
some ways, he clearly emphasizes the similarities between the beasts on Animal Farm and
the humans whom they are designed to represent; at other times, he demonstrates with
both humor and pathos the profound differences separating animal from man?differences
which in the end serve to limit the former. In doing so, he forces his reader to draw a
distinction between the personalities and conduct of the beasts and those of the human
world. Of course, the animals are designed to represent working people in their initial
4
Much of Orwell's other writing, particularly that which is contemporary to the creation of
Animal Farm, also supports the interpretation offered here. See, for example, CEJL, III, pp. 83 and
280-82; "Tapping the Wheels," Observer, 16 January 1944, p. 3. This is not to mention Orwell's
radical writings of the earlier war years, exemplified by his revolutionary enthusiasm in The Lion
and the Unicorn (see CEJL, II, pp. 74-134) and his two essays for Gollancz' The Betrayal ofthe
Left (1941), "Fascism and Democracy" and "Patriots and Revolutionaries" (pp. 206-14 and 234-
45). After Animal Farm, Orwell's position remained unchanged; see, for example, "The British
General Election," Commentary, November 1945, pp. 65-70, and "What Is Socialism?"
Manchester Evening News, 31 January 1946, p. 2.
5 For the Ukrainian

preface, see CEJL, III, pp. 455-59; see also "The Freedom of the Press,"
The Times Literary Supplement, 15 September 1972, pp. 1036-38.
6 The author would like to

thank the staff ofthe Orwell Archive, University College, University
of London for their very kind assistance in searching out the relevant materials for this discussion,
as well as for their help in finding resources for the larger work on Orwell's politics of which it
is but a small part. She would like to thank the estate of the late Sonia Orwell and Martin Secker
& Warburg for permission to publish extracts from their collection of Orwell's correspondence.
She would also like to thank the Yale University Library for permission to publish extracts from
the Dwight Macdonald Papers and for its generosity in making available to her copies of other
letters in their Manuscripts and Archives collection. This article was obviously accepted for
publication (28 March 1990) before the appearance of Michael Shelden's Orwell: the Authorized
Biography (Heinemann, 1991). Shelden's thorough research uncovered the Macdonald
correspondence, quotations from which were employed for the purpose of biographical, rather than
political, analysis.
7
See, for example, Patrick Reilly, George Orwell: the Age's Adversary (Macmillan, 1986),
pp. 266-67; Alan Sandison, George Orwell: After 1984 (Macmillan, 1986), p. 156; Alok Rai,
Orwell and the Politics of Despair (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 115-16; Stephen
Sedley, "An Immodest Proposal: Animal Farm," Inside the Myth (Lawrence & Wishart, 1984), p.
158; and Alex Zwerdling, Orwell and the Left (Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 90-94.
REVOLUTION ON ANIMAL FARM 129
social, economic, and political position in the society not just of Animal Farm but of
England in general. The basic antagonism between working class and capitalist is also
strongly emphasized by the metaphor: pig and man quarrel fiercely at the end of the
story. The diversity of the animal class, like the working class, is equally stressed by the
differing personalities of the creatures. Just because all have been subjected to human
rule, this does not mean that they will act as a united body once they take over the farm.
The qualities which, for Orwell, clearly unite the majority of the animals with their
human counterparts, the common working people, are a concern for freedom and equality
in society and a form of "innate decency" which prevents them from desiring power for
any personal gain. While this decency hinders the worker animals from discovering the
true nature of the pigs until the final scene, it also provides them with an instinctive
feeling for what a fair society might actually look like. Yet Orwell was obviously aware,
in using this metaphor, that the animals differ fundamentally from their human
counterparts. Unlike men, the majority of the beasts are limited naturally by their brief
lifespan and the consequent shortness of their memory. Moreover, their differentiated
physical types deny them the versatility of humans. Their class structure is fixed by their
immutable functions on the farm: a horse can never fill the role of a hen. The class
structure of human society, in contrast, is free from such biological demarcations. These
two profoundly limiting aspects of the animal condition, in which men share no part,
finally contribute to the creatures' passivity in the face of the pig dictatorship. The
metaphor, then, cannot be reduced to a simple equivalence, in the way that the pigs
reduce the seven Commandments of Animal Farm to one.8
Evidently the animals lack education and self-confidence in spite of the active
role which most of them played in the first rebellion and, in the case of some, are
naturally stupid. Orwell is not implying by this the hopelessness of a proletarian
revolution: he rather points to the need for education and self-confidence in any working
class movement if it is to remain democratic in character. Both of these attributes, he
appears further to suggest, must come from within the movement itself. The crude
proletarian spirit of the common animals necessarily provides the essential ingredient for
a revolution towards a free and equal society, but it needs careful honing and polishing
if it is not to fall victim to its own inherent decency and modesty. If this simple,
instinctive decency is to be preserved in the transition from revolution?which is all too
easy?to the construction of a new society?which is not?other kinds of virtue are also
necessary and must at all costs be developed by the working class if it is not to be
betrayed again. The text itself, however, hints at disaster for the rule of the pigs. Their
single tenet asserting that some animals are more equal than others is in the end a
meaningless absurdity. In spite of their great intellectual gifts, the pigs are ultimately the
most absurd of all the farm animals, for they are attempting to assume a human identity
which cannot belong to them. It is left to the reader to ponder the potential for political
change, given the evident weakness and vanity at the core of the pig dictatorship. The
final scene of the book, moreover, reveals the disillusionment of the working beasts with
their porcine leaders, an essential step in the process of creating a new revolution.9
8 A full
discussion of the animal-human metaphor and its political purpose is not within the
scope of this brief study, but is elaborated upon fully in the author's doctoral dissertation, "Tree
from Hunger and the Whip': Exploring the Political Development of George Orwell" (University
of Toronto, 1992).
9
Raymond Williams, in his George Orwell (Viking, 1971), shares this view: see pp. 74-5.
130 V.C. LETEMENDIA
Evidence external to the text of Animal Farm is not required to establish the
political meaning within its pages. Yet an examination of Orwell's attitude towards the
book during the difficult period in which he tried to have it published only strengthens
the conclusions drawn here. Even before Animal Farm was finished, Orwell was quite
aware that it would cause controversy because of its untimely anti-Stalinist message, and
he predicted difficulties in publishing it.10 He was, of course, correct: the manuscript
was refused by Gollancz, Andre Deutsch, and Jonathan Cape?in the latter case on the
advice of the Ministry of Information. Meanwhile, Orwell declined an offer to publish
the book in serial form in Lady Rhondda's Time and Tide, explaining that the politics of
the journal were too right-wing for his tale, only to be turned down by T.S. Eliot at
Faber and Faber, his next choice of publisher. The end of the story is well known to
Orwell scholars: Orwell went finally to Frederick Warburg, who accepted the manuscript,
and upon its publication in August 1945, it was well received and soon selected by the
Book-of-the-Month Club.11 Orwell's interest in the major publishing houses, as well
as his reluctance to approach Frederick Warburg as a first choice and his willingness at
one desperate point to pay himself to have the work reproduced in pamphlet form show
that he wanted it to reach the public at all costs and to address as wide an audience as
possible from as unprejudiced a political context as he could find. Naturally, Lady
Rhondda's journal would not have been suitable: his purpose was not to congratulate
conservatives or even liberals on the failure ofthe Russian Revolution, however scathing
his criticism of the Stalinist regime within the allegory. Furthermore, Orwell stood
firmly against any suggested alterations to the text, particularly in the instance of his
representation of the Bolsheviks as pigs. He made no excuses for Animal Farm?as he
would in the case of Nineteen Eighty-Four?and must have considered its message to be
fairly clear, for he offered no press releases to correct misinterpretations of the book
from either right- or left-wing political camps.12 On the contrary, it rather seems that
he was proud of the quality, as much as the political timeliness, of the book and expected
it to require no external defence or explanation; this opinion did not appear to change.13
Some further indication of Orwell's own view of Animal Farm may be found
in the two prefaces he wrote for it. Of the two, only the Ukrainian preface was actually
published. Its original English version, written early in 1947, has never been found, and
only a translation from the Ukrainian is available to Orwell scholars. This presents the
possibility that various errors or subtle alterations of meaning might have remained
10Bernard
Crick, George Orwell: a Life (Penguin, 1980), p. 450; for an indication of Orwell's
own fears about the unpopularity of his book, see CEJL, HI, pp. 71-2, 118-19 and 168-70.
11For full account of the

a publication problems and the reception of Animal Farm, see Crick,
pp. 452-58 and pp. 487-90.
12 For
an account of Orwell's own criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the conditions under
which it was written, and the statement which he issued in order to correct political
misinterpretations of it, see Crick, pp. 546-51 and 565-70.
13 For evidence of his
apparent satisfaction with the book, see CEJL, I, p. 29. His friend
William Empson recalls him complaining when the book first appeared that "'not one of [the
reviews] said it's a beautiful book.'" See Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick, eds., Orwell
Remembered (BBC, 1984), p. 183.
uncorrected by the author when it was first translated from English to Ukrainian.14
Written two years after the English preface, the Ukrainian piece obviously betrays a
purpose very different from that of its predecessor, as a result supplying the reader with
far more direct commentary on the text. Orwell makes it clear here that he "became
pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial
workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a
planned society." His experiences in Spain, he states, gave him first-hand evidence of
the ease with which "totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people
in democratic countries." Not only were the accusations against Trotskyists in Spain the
same as those made at the Moscow trials in the USSR; Orwell considers that he "had
every reason to believe that [they] were false," as far as Spain was concerned. Upon his
return to England, he discovered "the numerous sensible and well-informed observers
believing the most fantastic accounts of conspiracy, treachery and sabotage which the
press reported from the Moscow trials." What upset him most was not the "barbaric and
undemocratic methods" of Stalin and his associates, since, he argues, "It is quite possible
that even with the best intentions, they could not have acted otherwise under the
conditions prevailing there." The real problem, in his view, was that Western Europeans
could not see the truth about the Soviet regime, still considering it a Socialist country
when, in fact, it was being transformed "into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers
have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class." Both workers
and the intelligentsia had to be disabused of this illusion which they held partly out of
wilful misunderstanding and partly because of an inability to comprehend totalitarianism,
"being accustomed to comparative freedom and moderation in public life." To make
possible, then, a "revival of the Socialist movement" by exposing the Soviet myth, Orwell
writes that he tried to think of "a story that could be easily understood by almost
everyone and which could be easily translated into other languages."15
He claims that although the idea came to him upon his return from Spain in
1937, the details of the story were not worked out until the day he "saw a little boy,
perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it
whenever it tried to turn." If the horse could only become aware of its own strength, the
boy would obviously have no control over it. Orwell found in this a parallel with the
way in which "the rich exploit the proletariat," and he proceeded from this recognition
"to analyse Marx's argument from the animals' point of view." For them, he argues, the
idea of class struggle between humans was illusory; the real tension was between animals
and men, "since whenever it was necessary to exploit animals, all humans united against
them." The story was not hard to elaborate from this, Orwell continues, although he did
not actually write it all out until 1943, some six years after the main ideas had been
conceived of. Orwell declines to comment on the work in his preface, for "if it does not
speak for itself, it is a failure." Yet he ends with two points about details in the story:
14
Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, in their Orwell: the Transformation (Granada, 1981),
also consider this worth mentioning: see p. 185. Peter Davison, at present in the process of editing
The Complete Works of George Orwell, has already discovered a surprising number of mistakes
or changes made during the past publication of Orwell's work in English: it seems logical that the
potential inaccuracies of a re-translated translation uncorrected by its original author should be
contemplated seriously. For a brief account of Davison's discoveries, see The Sunday Times, 2
March, 1986, p. 5.
15
CEJL, III, pp. 455-8.
132 V.C. LETEMENDIA
first, that it required some chronological rearrangement of the events of the Russian
Revolution, and, second, that he did not mean pigs and men to appear reconciled
completely at the end of the book. On the contrary, "I meant it to end on a loud note of
discord, for I wrote it immediately after the Teheran Conference [parodied by the final
scene in Animal Farm] which everybody thought had established the best possible
relations between the USSR and the West. I personally did not believe that such good
relations would last long. . . ."16
It seems, then, that as much as Orwell wanted to explain how he had arrived at
Soeialism and at his understanding of totalitarianism, he sought to indicate in this preface
to Ukrainian readers how workers and intelligentsia in Western Europe, but especially
in England, misperceived the difference between the Soviet Union of 1917 and that of
twenty and thirty years later. Animal Farm was, according to its author, an attempt to
strip away the mythical veil shrouding the Stalinist regime; simultaneously, however, he
was trying to renew what had been lost through this deception and to revive the original
spirit of the Socialist movement. It seems possible to conclude that Orwell is suggesting
the presence of just such a double intention within the allegory. One point in the preface,
however, requires clarification. Orwell's reference to the animals' view that the real
class struggle lay between animals and humans suggests, in the context of the allegory,
the absence of any significant class struggle between members of the ruling class?or
humans?since they will readily forget their differences and unite to oppress animals.
This appears confusing when applied to Marx's theory, which Orwell claims as the
theoretical basis of this insight, and furthermore it does not capture the thrust of the story
itself, in which the divisions between animals are exposed in detail, rather than those
between humans, or even between humans and animals.17 But Orwell makes it quite
clear here that he refers to an animal perspective in defining the class struggle as one
between humans and beasts. Certainly the point of departure was, in both the Russian
situation and in this particular allegory, the identification and removal ofthe most evident
class of oppressors. In this initial movement, the oppressed class was not mistaken
politically; what came afterwards in both instances, though, demonstrated that the first
movement of revolutionary consciousness had not been sustained in its purity, since the
goals of the revolution gradually began to be violated. Orwell's remark in the preface
that "[f]rom this point of departure [the animals' view of the class struggle], it was not
difficult to elaborate the rest of the story" cannot be taken as an admission that the
16
CEJL, III, pp. 458-59.
17
Stephen Sedley concludes from this that "[t]he muddle is remarkable" and that "the book
begins and ends by debunking" the idea ofa class struggle between animals and humans, whether
it be attributed to the animals or to Orwell himself (Sedley, p.161). Rai, meanwhile, argues from
the Ukrainian preface thatnAnimal Farm had been intended as an allegory of the common people,
awaking to a realization of their strength and overthrowing their oppressors," but that "[i]n working
out the fable, however, in the winter of 1943-4, the euphoria collapsed" (Rai, p.l 15). Rai seems
to forget Orwell's own comment at the beginning of the preface that the idea for Animal Farm was
linked to his experience in Spain and explicitly designed to debunk the Soviet myth. This already
suggests a story with a far from idyllic ending. It was only after the idea had been conceived of,
according to Orwell, that he decided on the details of the story. It would thus appear likely that
Orwell had thought through the political message of his story long before the winter of 1943.
animals' perspective was perfectly correct.18 Of course, the book debunks such a
simplistic interpretation of the class struggle, in spite of its initial accuracy.
By revealing the divisions within the animal ranks, Orwell is cautioning his
reader to question the animal view ofthe class struggle, for the crucial problem that even
the wise Old Major does not predict in his identification of the real enemy is the
power-hunger of the pigs. By allegorical implication, this points rather interestingly to
Orwell's identification of a flaw in the Marxian theory of revolution itself. Although its
starting point is clearly the animals' partially accurate but insufficient analysis ofthe class
struggle, the allegory in its course reveals more and more drastically the inadequacy of
such a view as a basis for post-revolutionary society. Part of Old Major's vision is
indeed debunked, while the truth of the initial insight about class struggle is never denied,
and the story, as has been seen, ends on a note of hope. Orwell's final point in the
preface constitutes the only correction and very mild apology that he would make about
the text, even though he had had roughly two years to assess the critical response?and
hence the variety of misinterpretations?circulating about Animal Farm. Here he is
warning his reader about the subtlety of his allegory: pigs and humans may come to look
the same at the end, but they are still essentially enemies and share only a greed for
power. For it is indeed the dispute between farmers and pigs which completes the
transformation of pig to man and of man to pig.
If the Ukrainian preface was written for an unknown audience, the English
preface was designed for readers with whom Orwell was much more familiar. Written
in 1945, when he was still bitterly upset over the difficulties of printing unpopular
political commentary in wartime Britain, the English preface is concerned not with the
content of the story but with the question of whether he would be free to publish it at all
because of current political alliances, intellectual prejudices, and general apathy over the
need to defend basic democratic liberties.19 Attacking as he does here the political
toadying of the Left intelligentsia in Britain to the Stalinist regime, Orwell presents
Animal Farm as a lesson for the well-educated as much as the uneducated.20
Meanwhile, the fact that he makes no reference in this preface to the details of the book
indicates his strong confidence in its political clarity for English readers, although his
bitter tone shows, as Crick suggests, Orwell's acute sense that he was being "persecuted
for plain speaking" before Animal Farm was published.21 Since the English preface
18
CEJL, ffl, p. 459.
19
"Freedom ofthe Press," pp. 1036-38.
20 Orwell considered that

many such intellectuals had substituted for love of their own country
a far more slavish regard for the Soviet Union. For his ideas on this issue, see "Notes on
Nationalism," CEJL, III, pp. 410-31. In other writing ofthe time, his language was even stronger
than that of the English preface: see, for example, p. 263.
21
Crick, p. 463. Orwell was not, however, the only writer to feel this: as his friend Arthur
Koestler explains, "George and I were the only anti-Stalinists who could get printed. We felt we
were persecuted by the New Statesman etc, and what appalled us was not just the refusal to print
what we had written, but the systematic suppression of fact so that people simply did not know
what was going on. Sources of truthful information were the privately circulated news sheets.
. . . But people like Beaverbrook suppressed a great deal. I remember the 'Beaver' saying how we
all liked 'Uncle Joe' and therefore mustn't say too much against him." (Coppard and Crick, eds.,
pp. 167-68).
134 V.C. LETEMENDIA
does not actually offer an interpretation of Animal Farm explaining Orwell's political
intention, it is necessary to look for this information in his more private communications
on the subject.
Orwell commented explicitly on his book to his friends Geoffrey Gorer and
Dwight Macdonald. Crick states that Orwell gave a copy of Animal Farm to Gorer
having marked in it the passage in which Squealer defends the pigs' theft of the milk and
apples. He told Gorer that this "was the key passage."22 This emphasis of Orwell's
is reiterated and explained more fully in a letter to Dwight Macdonald written shortly
after Animal Farm first appeared in the United States, in 1946. Macdonald was one of
a group of American intellectuals who had broken with Soviet Communism as early as
1936 and had gone to work with Philip Rahv and William Phillips on Partisan
Review.23 From January 1941 to the summer of 1946, Orwell had sent regular "letters"
to the review and had had cause to correspond with Macdonald fairly frequently.
Macdonald was later to move to the editorship of Politics, described by Orwell in a letter
to T.S.Eliot as "a sort of dissident offshoot" of Partisan Review, and had already
championed a review written by Orwell that had been rejected for political reasons by the
Manchester Evening News.24 This shared political understanding soon developed into
a literary friendship which lasted until Orwell's death in 1950.25
In September 1944, Orwell had already written to Macdonald expressing his
views about the Soviet Union. Given that only a few months separated the completion
of Animal Farm from this letter, it seems safe to assume that the views expressed in both
might be similar. To Macdonald, Orwell stated, "I think the USSR is the dynamo of
world Socialism, so long as people believe in it. I think that if the USSR were to be
conquered by some foreign country the working class everywhere would lose heart, for
the time being at least, and the ordinary stupid capitalists who never lost their suspicion
of Russia would be encouraged." Furthermore, "the fact that the Germans have failed
to conquer Russia has given prestige to the idea of Socialism. For that reason I wouldn't
want to see the USSR destroyed and think it ought to be defended if necessary." There
is a caution, however: "[b]ut I want people to become disillusioned about it and to realise
that they must build their own Socialist movement without Russian interference, and I
want the existence of democratic Socialism in the West to exert a regenerative influence
upon Russia." He concludes that "if the working class everywhere had been taught to be
as anti-Russian as the Germans have been made, the USSR would simply have collapsed
22
Crick, p. 490. It is a pity that Crick does not provide here the source of this important
information.
23 David
Caute, The Fellow Travellers (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1973), pp. 88-9; see note.
See also Crick, p. 392.
24
See letter from Orwell to T.S.EIiot, 5 September 1944 in the Orwell Archive, reproduced
by kind permission of of the estate of the late Sonia Orwell and Martin Secker & Warburg. For
details ofthe rejected book review, see CEJL, III, pp. 169-70.
25 An
indication of its depth is that Sonia Orwell, when first considering the possibility of
contravening her husband's dying wish and authorizing a biography of him, wrote to Macdonald
to see if he would undertake it. He accepted with enthusiasm, but she later withdrew her offer,
having decided that it was too early for a biography to appear. See correspondence between Sonia
Orwell and Dwight Macdonald in the Orwell Archive.
in 1941 or 1942, and God knows what things would then have come out from under their
stones. After that Spanish business I hate the Stalin regime perhaps worse than you do,
but I think one must defend it against people like Franco, Laval etc."26
In spite of its repressive features and its betrayal of basic human freedoms, then,
Orwell still considered the Soviet regime to be vital as an example to the working class
everywhere. The real danger lay in the idea that it defined Socialism. What was most
needed was a new form of democratic Socialism created and maintained by the people.
He offers meanwhile the possibility that such democratic forms of Socialism elsewhere
might actually have a benign effect on the Russian regime.27 In the allegorical context
of Animal Farm, Napoleon's dictatorship would still seem to be a step forward from that
of the human farmers?according to Orwell's letter, the rule of "the ordinary stupid
capitalists." For animals outside the farm, it would provide a beacon of hope?so long
as the truth about the betrayal taking place within was made plain to them. For it would
now become their task to build their own movement in a democratic spirit which might,
in Orwell's words, "exert a regenerative influence" on the corruption of the pigs' realm.
When Animal Farm finally appeared in the United States in 1946, Macdonald
wrote again to Orwell, this time to discuss the book: "most of the anti-Stalinist
intellectuals I know . . . don't seem to share my enthusiasm for Animal Farm. They
claim that your parable means that revolution always ends badly for the underdog, hence
to hell with it and hail the status quo. My own reading of the book is that it is meant to
apply to Russia without making any larger statement about the philosophy of revolution.
None of the objectors have so far satisfied me when I raised this point; they admit
explicitly that is all you profess to do, but still insist that implicit is the broader point.
. . . Which view would you say comes closer to your intentions?"28
Orwell's reply deserves quoting in full: "Of course I intended it primarily as a
satire on the Russian revolution. But I did mean it to have a wider application in so
26 Letter from Orwell to

Dwight Macdonald, 5 September 1944, Dwight Macdonald Papers,
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; copy in Orwell Archive, reproduced by kind
permission of the estate of the late Sonia Orwell and Martin Secker & Warburg. Orwell made a
similar point in a later letter to Frank Barber, in which he states: "My attention was first drawn
to this deliberate falsification of history by my experiences in the Spanish civil war. One can't
make too much noise about it while the man in the street identifies the cause of ?ocialism with the
USSR, but I believe one can make a perceptible difference by seeing that the true facts get into
print, even if it is only in some obscure place." (15 December 1944, Orwell Archive), reproduced
by kind permission of the estate of the late Sonia Orwell and Martin Secker & Warburg. At this
date, of course, Orwell was still waiting for Animal Farm to "get into print"; it might be that his
comment about "some obscure place" could refer to the book itself.
27 In another letter to Macdonald written at the time that Orwell was involved with his final
novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, he argues with an optimism which might surprise some of his critics:
"Communism will presently shed certain unfortunate characteristics such as bumping off its
opponents, and if Socialists join up with the CP they can persuade it into better ways" (2 May
1948, Dwight Macdonald Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; copy in
Orwell Archive).
28
Letter from Dwight Macdonald to Orwell, 2 December 1946, Dwight Macdonald Papers,
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; copy in Orwell Archive. The argument to
which Macdonald objects is still a favorite with Orwell's critics on the Left: Stephen Sedley offers
it in his critique of Animal Farm (Sedley, op. cit.).
136 V.C. LETEMENDIA
much that I meant that that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by
unconsciously power-hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters. I meant the
moral to be that 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. The
turning point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for
themselves (Kronstadt.) If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down
then, it would have been all right. If people think I am defending the status quo, that is,
I think, because they have grown pessimistic and assume there is no alternative except
dictatorship or laissez-faire capitalism. In the case of the Trotskyists, there is the added
complication that they feel responsible for events in the USSR up to about 1926 and have
to assume that a sudden degeneration took place about that date, whereas I think the
whole process was foreseeable?and was foreseen by a few people, e.g. Bertrand
Russell?from the very nature of the Bolshevik party. What I was trying to say was,
'You can't have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as
a benevolent dictatorship.'"29
Yes, Animal Farm was intended to have a wider application than a satire upon
the Russian regime alone. Yes, it did indeed imply that the rule of the pigs was only "a
change of masters." Yet it did not condemn to the same fate all revolutions, nor for a
moment suggest that Farmer Jones should be reinstated as a more benevolent dictator
than Napoleon. According to Orwell's letter, the problem examined by Animal Farm
concerns the nature of revolution itself. Unless everyone makes the revolution for him
or herself without surrendering power to an elite, there will be little hope for freedom or
equality. A revolution in which violence and conspiracy become the tools most resorted
to, one which is led by a consciously or unconsciously power-hungry group, will
inevitably betray its own principles.30 Failing to protest when the pigs kept the milk
and apples for themselves, the other animals surrendered what power they might have had
to pig leadership. Had they been "alert and [known] how to chuck out their leaders"31
once the latter had fulfilled their task, the original spirit of Animal Farm might have been
salvaged. The book itself, Orwell makes clear in his letter, was calling not for the end
of revolutionary hopes, but for the beginning of a new kind of personal responsibility on

Dwight Macdonald, 5 December 1946, Dwight Macdonald Papers,
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; copy in Orwell Archive. It is interesting to
compare this statement with one made by Orwell in a commentary on Randall Swingler's Violence
published in Polemic, V (September-October, 1946), pp. 45-53: "I do not believe in the possibility
of benevolent dictatorship, nor, in the last analysis, in the honesty of those who defend dictatorship.
Of course, one develops and modifies one's views, but I have never fundamentally altered my
attitude towards the Soviet regime since I first began to pay attention to it some time in the
nineteen-twenties. But so far from disappointing me, it has actually turned out somewhat better
than I would have predicted fifteen years ago" (p. 53).
30
This is not to argue that Orwell defended pacificism; his fighting in Spain and his urgent and
frequent attempts to join the army during the Second World War demonstrate his acceptance ofthe
need for violent combat in order to defend basic human liberties. Yet he was evidently aware of
the ease with which violence and conspiracy could be turned against the initial purpose which
seemed to justify them. In the text of Animal Farm, Boxer's sorrow at the necessity of violence
even in the struggle to overthrow human rule suggests a deeper wisdom than he is often given
credit for (see pp. 36-7).

Dwight Macdonald, 5 December 1946.
the part of revolutionaries. The most important barrier in the way of such a democratic
Socialist revolution was the Soviet myth: if people outside still thought that that particular
form of revolution could succeed without betraying its goals, nothing new could be
accomplished. The final note of Orwell's letter is optimistic: if people mistook his
message for a conservative one, it was precisely their problem. They had no confidence
in the possibility of an alternative to either capitalism or dictatorship. In a sense, they
would be like those animals who, when forced into making a choice between a false set
of alternatives by Squealer?either the return of Farmer Jones or unquestioning obedience
to the rule of the pigs?failed to consider the possibility of a third choice, a democratic
Socialist society. For although Orwell was prepared to provide a fairly detailed
explanation of his animal story for his friend Macdonald, his letter makes it quite evident
that the burden of understanding Animal Farm still lay with its reader.
Given the striking congruity between the text and Orwell's political commentary
about it, it would be rash to argue that he had lost control of his allegory in Animal
Farm. If it takes time and effort to expose the political intricacies behind the stark prose
of his animal fable, this must have been partly his intention: the lesson of democracy was
not an easy one to learn, and the next revolutionary move towards democratic Socialism
could surely not be allowed to repeat the mistakes of Old Major. Still, we may wonder
if the grain of hope provided by the final scene of the book is not, in this light, too
insubstantial to feed a new generation of revolutionaries. Yet if Orwell had presented an
easy political resolution to the horrors of totalitarianism, his warning would lose its force.
His reader could remain complacent, detached from the urgent need for personal
involvement in political change so emphasized by the animal allegory. If he had designed
a political solution for the other beasts, furthermore, he could be accused of hypocrisy:
his whole argument both inside and outside the text rested on the proposition that the
people had to make and retain control of the revolution themselves if they wanted it to
remain true to its goals. The deceit of the pigs was not the only failure on Animal Farm,
for the foolish simplicity of the other animals and, indeed, of Old Major's naive idea of
revolutionary change were as much to blame for the dictatorship which ensued. Orwell
had to warn his readers that their apathy and thoughtlessness were as dangerous as blind
admiration for the Stalinist regime. Only when all members of society saw the essential
need for individual responsibility and honesty at the heart of any struggle for freedom and
equality could the basic goals of Socialism, as Orwell saw them, be approached more
closely. Meanwhile, no single revolutionary act could create a perfect world, either for
the animals or for the humans whom they represent in the story. Acceptance of the
notion of class struggle could not lead to an instant transformation of society unless those
who would transform it accepted also the difficult burden of political power, both at the
time of and after the revolution. While the most corrupting force on Animal Farm was
the deception practiced upon the other animals by the pigs, the greatest danger came from
the reluctance ofthe oppressed creatures to believe in an alternative between porcine and
human rule. Yet it was in the affirmation of dignity, freedom, and equality tacitly
provided by the nobler qualities of the presumed lower animals that Orwell saw the
beginnings of such an alternative. So it is that, in the last moment of the book, he leaves
open the task of rebuilding the revolution on a wiser and more cautiously optimistic
foundation.
Why I Write
by George Orwell
From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should
be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but
I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I
should have to settle down and write books.
I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I
barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I
soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays.
I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary
persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of
being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing
unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own
back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously
intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount
to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down
to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger
had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's
‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which
was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener.
From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in
the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total
of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with
there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to
myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn
out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in
imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both
printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could
imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism.
But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a
quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary
existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very
small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of
thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and
became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes
at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and
entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to
the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket
he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’,
etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years.
Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this
descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’
1
must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so
far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds
and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost —
So hee with difficulty and labour hard

Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.
which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the
spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about
it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want
to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings,
full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words
were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese
Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's
motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be
determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our
own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from
which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and
avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his
early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn
a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist
in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to
time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death,
to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to
pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists,
artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust
of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about
thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or
are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who
are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers,
I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested
in money.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other
hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in
the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which
one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of
writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which
appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of
margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic
considerations.
2
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store
them up for the use of posterity.
(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire
to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that
they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion
that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they
must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to
be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three
motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely
descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I
have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable
profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of
failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware
of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding
of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate
political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still
failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my
dilemma:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
3
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I
stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or
indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me
nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone
writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what
approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one
has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing
into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit
down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it
because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and
my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a
long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine
my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time
politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the
world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to
feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid
objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The
job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual
activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new
way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty
that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly
political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did
try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other
things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the
Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year
or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I
4
respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned
what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have
done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to
know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should
never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler
and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less
picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style
of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with
full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one
whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is
bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book
I want to write.
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my
motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression.
All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a
mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful
illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom
one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct
that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable
unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a
windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know
which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is
invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into
purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
1946
THE END
George Orwell: ‘Why I Write’

First published: Gangrel. — GB, London. — summer 1946.

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The Dual Purpose of "Animal Farm"

Author(s): Paul Kirschner

Afternearly sixtyyearsdebatecontinues overtheultimate politicalmeaning of

Whoeverfeelsthe value of literature, whoeversees the centralpart it plays in the

When,a coupleofyearsago,AnimalFarmwas puton stagein China,thelong

caseforrevolution.3 In 1998 criticswerestilldebatingwhetherAnimalFarm

philosophizing;it impugnsanimalwisdomin general.Similarly, his personal

8 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan(Chicago, 1952),I. xiii (p. 85).

More obviously,theswitchfromMajor's anthem'BeastsofEngland'to the

chaos thatyou wishto makewillarise,likea Phoenix,a dictator"'(H. Pitcher,Witnesses

ism bolstersympathy withtherank-and-file animals.When,aftertheirinitial

incomeceilings;classlesseducation;and DominionstatusforIndia.In 1946he

Althoughby 'Communism'OrwellusuallymeanttheRussianregimeor its

14 He also gavenewmeaningto Marx's famousdefinition ofreligion:'Marx did notsay,at any

popular,that"Communismand Fascismarethesamething"'(i. 291). He saw

15 Leon Trotsky,My Life(New York, 1930), 541.

'answerto the hopefulmessage'17of Sinclair'sbook,to whichJurgislistens

Asked if he had intended a statementabout revolutionin general,Orwell said

19 Letterto D. Macdonald,5 Dec. 1946 (Yale). Quoted in Letemendia,'Revolutionon Animal

thinkofanyresolutions oftheirown' (p. 19)). Exceptfortheauthor'salterego

25 Letterto G. Orwell,24 Aug. 1945 (OrwellArchive).Quoted in Crick,GeorgeOrwell,491.

hair.... One satspellboundat hiscommandoflanguageand thepassionofhis

constrictedbytheparableformthathe redefined hisbookas 'a littlefairystory

functionson thefarm'.In fact,Benjamin,who stresseshis longevity,

Teheran conferenceinspired.But why parodya 'fairystory'for 'political'

Dickenskepthis word.In 'Fraudson theFairies'he denounced'theintrusion

Kay's prototypewas a collectionof German 'proletarian'fairytales by

whyshouldhis fifteenth yearbe cloudedby worrying aboutthatin advance?He may,at thirty,

[sic],and worms.. .' He paused cleverlyto let theaudiencetakein thesight.'If you

The thirsty chickensexclaimed,'What do you mean,yours!It is everyone's.'

Now, on the farmtherewas a duck,a veryhandsomegracefulduck. He would

As faras I know,the onlyextantcopy of Kay's bookletis in Harvard's

laynotin contentbutin form.Max Frischonce ascribedthepeculiarforceof

56 Max Frisch,'Uber Marionetten', in Tagebuch1946-1949(Zurich,1964), 154.

60 See P. Davison,ed. TheComplete WorksofGeorgeOrwell(London, 1998),viii.116.According

yearin whichOrwellsaid he firstthoughtof AnimalFarm,Gollancz'sLeft

Publicly,she denouncedelectionsorganizedin May 1848 against'chimerical

Young, Cloudsand Sunshine:A FairyPlay (1922); L. F. Ramsey,Fairiesto theRescue,a Fairy

64 There wereprobablyothers.Trotsky'sTheRevolution Betrayed(1937) mayhave suggested

In 1938Orwellhimselfhad calledtheslogan'Guns beforebutter!'a dodgeto

67 TheRussianMyth,26. 68 Ibid. 28-9. 69 Ibid. 30.

'The most interestingdevelopmentof the anti-warfronthas been the

70 See F. S. Saunders,WhoPaid thePiper?TheCIA and theCulturalCold War(London, 1999),

73 See Zipes,FairyTalesandtheArtofSubversion, 60 ff.,179ff.Zur Mtihlenwasrediscovered in

75 Independent on Sunday,1 Sept. 2002, p. 10.

Revolution on Animal Farm:

Orwell's Neglected Commentary

IN THE LAST SCENE OF GEORGE

V.C. Letemendia, "Revolution on Animal Farm: Orwell's Neglected Commentary."

5 For the Ukrainian

6 The author would like to

11For full account of the

20 Orwell considered that

26 Letter from Orwell to

29 Letter from Orwell to

31 Letter from Orwell to

So hee with difficulty and labour hard

George Orwell: ‘Why I Write’

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