The novel Animal Farm was written by a British political novelist George Orwell in 1946 as a parallel to a mankind in the form of an animal fable. Even though the title of this novel creates the impression of the book about rural life, the leitmotif is hardly about the Farm itself. The author presents historical events and the totalitarian political regime in general in an interesting and pessimistically satirical way.
At first the reader can easily get confused with the main idea as Orwell demonstrates the dictatorship in Communist Russia through the prism of positive ‘animal’ reality. The story starts with the meeting in the big barn where Old Major, a prizewinning boar, who expresses his dream he has had about a future rebellion of animals against man and the world with no human beings to control them (Orwell, 15). All the animals from the farm greet his optimistic inspirational idea with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, as human history shows, great utopian ideas can end with horrible outcome, as it happened in the Animal Farm story.
The consolidation of power in ‘pig’ society, built on the great revolutionary idea and massive support of animals, makes the turnaround in calm farm’s life. George Orwell perfectly shows the common mistakes with modern society, highlighting how powerless people are the perfect subject to propaganda, the same as it was used by early Russian leaders during the first decades of the 20th century (Letemendia, 135). Moreover, the author interprets the drastically twisted Major’s idea as criticism of Stalin, who considered to be the one who completely ignored and rewrote Karl Marx’s political and social ideas, allowing the readers to draw the imaginary parallels between actual events and people and the fiction ones created by George Orwell.
In the novel “Animal Farm” there is a diversified and interesting cast of characters. Each animal or a group of animals has a real political representation in the history as individual characters, certain types of human beings and ideas in general.
As Animal Farm is an allegory about the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin’s government, we can easily appoint main characters and political groups represented by animals: Manor Farm is the Russian Empire; Mr. Jones is the emperor or tsar; pigs are the representatives of Bolshevism, the bureaucratic power elite; Snowball is Leon Trotsky, one of Lenin’s fellow revolutionaries who eventually lost its power; the pig Napoleon is either Stalin or the dominant figures of the Russian Revolution in general; Napoleon’s dogs are Stalin’s secret military police, known as the NKVD. During the novel the power and control of the farm shifts from Mr. Jones to Snowball and later to Napoleon (Orwell, 27).
The author also shows the lifestyle of the average factory worker in Russian society by highlighting the issue of the horse Boxer. It is quite controversial, but mostly positive character and the hardest worker on the farm. His enthusiasm, dedication and contribution to building the millhouse was the biggest. He was constantly supporting the pigs. However, as soon as the horse was unable to continue working, Napoleon and his dogs phased him out of the farm. The storyline of Boxes illustrates how dictatorship uses nation to achieve certain goals, but disregards the people as soon as they are no longer needed. At the point of victory, the matter of exhaustion of human resources prevails.
Orwell concludes that no society is perfect, even if the initial idea was perfect. The utopian, ‘pig’ society breaks down and fails to satisfy the characters’ interests and only the main authorities are satisfied with the regime’s outcome (Rai, 19). Too much power brings the worst in people. Eventually, the opening character old Major becomes a forgotten element of the past in the minds of society.
Works Cited:
Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954. Print.
Letemendia, Claire. “Revolution on Animal Farm.” Journal of Modern Literature 18.1 (1992), 127-137. Print.
Rai, Alok. Orwell and the Politics of Despair: A Critical Study of the Writings of George Orwell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. Print.