Animal Farm is an allegorical novel by George Orwell based on his own perspectives of the Russian

Revolution as a democratic socialist. One of Orwell’s main messages in Animal Farm is how power
can often lead to corruption and oppression.

Many characters in Animal Farm represent famous political figures from history. For example,
Snowball can be seen as the figure Trotsky and Napolean as Stalin. In the opening of Animal Farm,
Orwell presents the reader with Old Major, an old pig, giving a speech to the animals about the ideas
of a Revolution. He describes the life of the animals as “miserable, laborious and short” and
persuades the animals that life without their horrible farmer would be free, equal and happy. Since
Old Major is the most respected animal on the farm, it forces the naïve animals to support his plan to
break away from their current lives and revolt. Orwell intended the readers to see the links between
Old Major and Lenin, and for the animals to represent the citizens of Russia and in turn create
criticism of the revolution. The citizens of Russia followed Lenin as he used political rhetoric to
fabricate lies about how wonderful the world would be after the revolution. These lies further
encouraged the people of Russia to support him as they wanted more authority and power over their
country. Old Major is also seen to critique man by saying “man serves the interest of no creatures
except himself” which implies that man is not to be trusted and is greedy. This foreshadows the
hypocritical behaviour of Napolean later in the the book as he is seen using his power to benefit his
selfish desires.

After the rebellion of the animals, a set of commandments are put into place, that should all be
followed after the farm is renamed to Animal Farm. These set of rules indicate that all animals are
equal, free and should not behave like humans. The seven commandments represent the new
system of government at the time-communism.

When the revolution begins, the law that all animals are equal is put into place, but over time the
pigs clearly put themselves in a higher position than the other animals and this once again forms a
hierarchy which was aimed to be removed. This hierarchy which begins to form divides the animals
once again, which makes them no longer equal. We can see the division slowly start to take place as
the animals soon discover that the milk and apples had been stolen by the pigs. When questions
began to arise, the pigs quickly began using the excuse of “pigs are brainworkers” and if they were to
fail Mr. Jones would return to the farm. Orwell uses this to shed light on the corruption of the
revolution that is being caused and uses this to comment on how Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised
that Russia would live a leaderless society once Russia had settled into communism. Just how thisd
was never a reality, the need for the pigs to be plump and strong was no longer necessary, this shows
how the pigs took advantage of how naïve the animals were.

Towards the end of the book Orwell creates a final example of his distrust to revolution through
Benjamin’s character as he says to remember that “things were never better or much worse”. This
contrast with the ideas of Old Major who presented the results of a revolution with multiple gains
rather than losses. Orwell shows at the end of the book that revolution is simply an outward
expression of rage to inequality, rather than a cure, and under the hierarchy of anyone there will
always be inequality present.