Critical Discussion

1st Source
Animal Farm was released to critical acclaim. Writing for the New York Times, historian Arthur M.
Schlesinger Jr. hailed it as “a simple story perhaps, but a story of deadly simplicity … [a] superbly controlled
and brilliantly sustained satire.” Not everyone agreed with Schlesinger, however. Writer and critic W. J.
Turner, for instance, thought the novel was marred by “pessimism” and accused Orwell of being “grossly
unfair to Stalin in his account of him as ‘Napoleon.’” Still, the fact that the novel has been a staple in
classrooms for generations suggests that critics like Turner did not have the last say.

Writing in 1989, activist-scholar John Molyneux (1948–) summed up Animal Farm as “probably the most
popular and influential piece of literary propaganda produced in English, perhaps in any language, this
century.” Molyneux claimed it was “likely that far more people have learned what they know of the fate of
the Russian Revolution from here than from any other source.” In his introduction to a 2003 edition of the
novel (with Nineteen Eighty-Four), essayist and critic Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) confirmed
Animal Farm's distinction as “the twentieth century's most successful satire.” As Hitchens and Molyneux
both make clear, although the novel has long appealed to younger readers with scant knowledge of Soviet
history, the book's legacy rests on its political force.

Indeed, Orwell scholars continue to read the novel for its political insights. Discussing The Rule of the
Pigs, Oleg Minich's 2005 cartoon adaptation of Animal Farm, Olena Nikolayenko insisted in her 2007
essay in PS: Political Science and Politics that the book speaks profoundly to contemporary crises in and
for democracy—in Minich's case, in the former Soviet Republic of Belarus. Other twenty-first-century
scholars similarly return to Animal Farm to think through enduring political issues. David Dwan, for
instance, in an ELH (English Literary History) article, considered Orwell's treatment of equality as a
means of probing contemporary practices under Western democracy that do not always live up to
prevailing ideals. Meanwhile, scholars such as Paul Kirschner have tried to reclaim the text as not only a
political but also a literary work, reminding readers of Orwell's own declared intention “to fuse political
purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.”

2nd Source
The three (3) most important aspects of Animal Farm:

• Animal Farm is an allegory, which is a story in which concrete and specific characters and
situations stand for other characters and situations to make a point about them. The main action
of Animal Farm stands for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the early years of the Soviet Union.
Animalism is really communism. Manor Farm is allegorical of Russia, and the farmer Mr. Jones
is the Russian Czar. Old Major stands for either Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin, and the pig named
Snowball represents the intellectual revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Napoleon stands for Stalin, while
the dogs are his secret police. The horse Boxer stands in for the proletariat or working class.
 • The setting of Animal Farm is a dystopia, which is an imagined world that is far worse than our
own, as opposed to a utopia, which is an ideal place or state. Other dystopian novels include
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Orwell's own 1984.
• The most famous line from the book is "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than
others." This line is emblematic of the changes that George Orwell believed followed the 1917
Communist Revolution in Russia. Rather than eliminating the capitalist class system it was
intended to overthrow, the revolution merely replaced it with another hierarchy. The line is also
typical of Orwell's belief that those in power usually manipulate language to their own benefit.

3rd Source
First, a very brief history lesson, by way of context for Animal Farm. In 1917, the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas
II, was overthrown by Communist revolutionaries.

These revolutionaries replaced the aristocratic rule which had been a feature of Russian society for
centuries with a new political system: Communism, whereby everyone was equal. Everyone works, but
everyone benefits equally from the results of that work. Josef Stalin became leader of Communist Russia,
or the Soviet Union, in the early 1920s.

However, it soon became apparent that Stalin’s Communist regime wasn’t working: huge swathes of the
population were working hard, but didn’t have enough food to survive. They were starving to death.

But Stalin and his politicians, who themselves were well-off, did nothing to combat this problem, and
indeed actively contributed to it. But they told the people that things were much better since the Russian
Revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar, than things had been before, under Nicholas II. The parallels
with Orwell’s Animal Farm are crystal-clear.

Animal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the formation of a Communist regime in Russia
(as the Soviet Union). The key thing is that, although it was subtitled A Fairy Story, Orwell’s novella is far
from being a straightforward tale for children. It’s also political allegory, and even satire.

The cleverness of Orwell’s approach is that he manages to infuse his story with this political meaning while
also telling an engaging tale about greed, corruption, and ‘society’ in a more general sense.

One of the commonest techniques used in both Stalinist Russia and in Animal Farm is what’s known as
‘gaslighting’ (meaning to manipulate someone by psychological means so they begin to doubt their own
sanity; the term is derived from the film adaptation of Gaslight, a play by Patrick Hamilton).

For instance, when Napoleon and the other pigs take to eating their meals and sleeping in the beds in the
house at Animal Farm, Clover is convinced this goes against one of the seven commandments the animals
drew up at the beginning of their revolution.

But one of the pigs has altered the commandment (‘No animal shall sleep in a bed’), adding the words ‘with
sheets’ to the end of it. Napoleon and the other pigs have rewritten history, but they then convince Clover
that she is the one who is mistaken, and that she’s misremembered what the wording of the
commandment was.

Another example of this technique – which is a prominent feature of many totalitarian regimes, namely
keep the masses ignorant as they’re easier to manipulate that way – is when Napoleon claims that
Snowball has been in league with Mr Jones all along. When the animals question this, based on all of the
evidence to the contrary, Napoleon and Squealer declare they have ‘secret documents’ which prove it.

But the other animals can’t read them, so they have to take his word for it. Squealer’s lie about the van that
comes to take Boxer away (he claims it’s going to the vet, but it’s clear that Boxer is really being taken away
to be slaughtered) is another such example.

Much as Stalin did in Communist Russia, Napoleon actively rewrites history, and manages to convince
the animals that certain things never happened or that they are mistaken about something. This is a
feature that has become more and more prominent in political society, even in non-totalitarian ones:
witness our modern era of ‘fake news’ and media spin where it becomes difficult to ascertain what is true
any more

The pigs also convince the other animals that they deserve to eat the apples themselves because they work
so hard to keep things running, and that they will have an extra hour in bed in the mornings. In other
words, they begin to become the very thing they sought to overthrow: they become like man.

They also undo the mantra that ‘all animals are equal’, since the pigs clearly think they’re not like the other
animals and deserve special treatment. Whenever the other animals question them, one question always
succeeds in putting an end to further questioning: do they want to see Jones back running the farm? As
the obvious answer is ‘no’, the pigs continue to get away with doing what they want.

Squealer is Napoleon’s propagandist, ensuring that the decisions Napoleon makes are ‘spun’ so that the
other animals will accept them and carry on working hard.

And we can draw a pretty clear line between many of the major characters in Animal Farm and key figures
of the Russian Revolution and Stalinist Russia. Napoleon, the leader of the animals, is Joseph Stalin; Old
Major, whose speech rouses the animals to revolution, represents Vladimir Lenin, who spearheaded the
Russian Revolution of 1917; Snowball, who falls out with Napoleon and is banished from the farm,
represents Leon Trotsky, who was involved in the Revolution but later went to live in exile in Mexico.

Squealer, meanwhile, is based on Molotov (after whom the Molotov cocktail was named); Molotov was
Stalin’s protégé, much as Squealer is encouraged by Napoleon to serve as Napoleon’s right-hand (or right-
hoof?) man (pig).

Animal Farm very nearly didn’t make it into print at all. First, not long after Orwell completed the first
draft in February 1944, his flat on Mortimer Crescent in London was bombed in June, and he feared the
typescript had been destroyed. Orwell later found it in the rubble.
Then, Orwell had difficulty finding a publisher. T. S. Eliot, at Faber and Faber, rejected it because he
feared that it was the wrong sort of political message for the time (you can read Eliot’s letter to Orwell
here).

The novella was eventually published the following year, in 1945, and its relevance – as political satire, as
animal fable, and as one of Orwell’s two great works of fiction – shows no signs of abating.

Analysis

Animal Farm parallels the Russian Revolution. It's a satire. It's a study of the soviet union and the Russian
revolution and an allegory for self-rule and how governments are structure. On top of it all, it's a
cautionary tale for the perils of power itself.

Symbols

• Animal farm is rife with important symbols the animals' names are representative of their actions or
power positions
• Things like milk and apples the windmill, and Old Major's skull represent respectively riches and
material wealth labor and the history of the soviet union.
• Vladimir Lenin's body was put on display after his death so too was Old Major's skull canonized as the
founding idealist leader of the revolution.
• Mr Jones's rifle is a symbolic trophy representing the animal's victory over their former masters, the
humans.

Themes

Corruption - We see how the inches napoleon and his inner circle take when it comes to control and power
end up becoming miles leading the animals far astray from their original ideas of communist utopia.

Exploitation - Throughout animal farm we see how the working class is exploited by ruling elites to
provide for their aristocratic needs the hard-working lower classes serve the deceptive upper ones.

Deception - We see how napoleon and squealer bend history to better suit their needs suppressing
education while fear-mongering creates a culture of deception that allows for the rise of a dictator.

Idealism - Dreams of equality and legends of animal bravery set the stage for a revolution underscored by
good intentions like the one shown in the battle of the cowshed and the rules set by Old Major as he held
the last meeting before he drew his last breath.

Apathy - An important theme for understanding how dictatorships take place. Without action to back it
up, education is essentially useless. We especially see this in Benjamin the donkey whose cynical attitude
and insistence that nothing ever changes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom as they looked
through the window with the pig partying, and the animals not anymore able to recognize the difference
of the pigs from humans.
Sources

• Dwan, David. “Orwell's Paradox: Equality in ‘Animal Farm.’” ELH: English Literary History 79.3
(2012): 655–83.
• Kirschner, Paul. “The Dual Purpose of ‘Animal Farm.’” Review of English Studies 55.222 (2004):
759–86.
• Molyneux, John. “Animal Farm Revisited.” International Socialism Journal 2.44 (1989): 99–112.
Print.
• Nikolayenko, Olena. “Web Cartoons in a Closed Society: Animal Farm as an Allegory of Post-
Communist Belarus.” PS: Political Science and Politics 40.2 (2007): 307–10.
• Orwell, George. Animal Farm and 1984. Introduction by Christopher Hitchens. New York:
Harcourt, 2003. Print.
• Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. “Mr. Orwell and the Communists: His ‘Animal Farm’ Is a
Compassionate and Illuminating Fable for Our Times.” New York Times 25 Aug. 1946: 124+.
• Turner, W. J. “How It Happened.” Rev. of Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Spectator 17 Aug. 1945:
156–57.