A Simple Note on Animal Farm

On August 17, 1945, George Orwell’s satirical allegorical novella Animal Farm was originally published in England. The story follows a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer in order to create a society in which all animals are equal, free, and happy. The rebellion is eventually betrayed, and the farm reverts to its previous form under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.The story, according to Orwell, mirrors events leading up to the 1917 Russian Revolution and later into the Soviet Union’s Stalinist era. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and a foe of Moscow-directed Stalinism, an opinion moulded in part by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War’s Confrontations between the POUM and Stalinist forces during May Days.Orwell classified Animal Farm as a satirical narrative against Stalin (“un conte satirique contre Staline”) in a letter to Yvonne Davet, and in his essay “”Why I Write”” (1946), he said it was the first book in which he strove “to meld political purpose and artistic aim into one whole” with full understanding of what he was doing.

Animal Farm: George Orwell

In his short novel Animal Farm (1945), English novelist George Orwell (1903–50) allegorizes the 1917 Russian Revolution, in which the tsarist monarchy was toppled, and the Bolsheviks seized power, as well as the revolution’s eventual betrayal of its supporters under dictator Joseph Stalin (1879–1953). Orwell narrates a farmyard scenario, portraying revolutionary leaders Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), and Joseph Stalin as pigs who, together with other common farm animals like horses and chickens, struggle against the tyranny of tsar-like farmer Mr. Jones. The tale is set on a small English farm and follows a group of working animals who, as the pigs exploit them again, toil pitifully day after day in the hope of recreating the farm as a republic.

Animal Farm was written near the conclusion of World War II (1939–45), when the Allied forces (including the British) were praising the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for its Stalingrad (1942–43) and Kursk (1944–45) were key victories over Nazi Germany. (1943). As a result, he had trouble finding a publisher who was willing to upset Russian sensitivities. The novel was rejected outright by Gollancz and Faber & Faber, among other publishing organisations. Jonathan Cape, a London publisher, came close to publishing it but was persuaded to reject it by a Ministry of Information officer afterwards suspected of being a Soviet agent.

Animal Farm Analysis

Following the revolution, the Russian Communist Party restructured the previous empire as a federation of republics, with governments guided by German philosopher Karl Marx’s socialist doctrines. Soviet Russia underwent an era of reconstruction under Lenin’s leadership, during which it privatised all parts of the economy and attempted to repress any kinds of opposition against its Marxist-Leninist goals. Following Lenin’s death, Stalin staged a coup from within the Communist Party, and despite adopting Marxist-Leninism as a creed, he transformed the party into a fully totalitarian organisation. Millions of enemies of the state were executed or transferred to forced labour camps during the so-called Great Purge.

• Meanwhile, rushed attempts to modernise peasant agriculture resulted in famines that killed millions. In the sly manoeuvrings of the boar, Napoleon, to oust his rivals and take control of the farm; in his forcing the animals to build an electricity-generating windmill, leaving no time for food production; and in his purges of alleged traitors to the animals’ revolution against Mr. Jones, Animal Farm retells this history metaphorically.
• The tale begins with the characters of Old Major, Snowball, and Napoleon—pigs on a farm where animals are bred to produce (like the chickens), to labour (like the cart horses), and to be fattened for slaughter (like the pigs) (like the pigs).
• The Russian Revolution is satirised as a fight between Mr. Jones and his animals, and Old Major rouses the animals to revolt against the “tyranny of man.” The victorious animals take control, and with a renewed feeling of pride, they begin everyday activities like hay harvesting. The pigs, on the other hand, have only recently posted the “seven laws of Animalism,” which include the notion that “all animals are equal,” when they opt out of the hard labour and claim the farmhouse completely for themselves. What culminates in Napoleon’s tyranny has a catastrophic impact on the lives of the ordinary animals, who continue to toil in the delusion that they are creating Old Major’s republic.
• Bunt (1924), by Polish novelist Władysław Stanislav Reymont (1867–1925), is strikingly similar to Animal Farm, though it is unclear if Orwell was aware of it. With a plot about farm animals rebelling against their human owners in a quest for equality that ends in terror and persecution, the novel allegorizes the same revolution. After Animal Farm, Orwell’s second work, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), presents a similarly symbolic—though more realistic—vision of everyday life impoverished culturally and politically by a Stalinesque rule. Orwell’s nonfiction account of his time fighting for a leftist militia in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Homage to Catalonia (1938), reflects his fear of Stalinism.

Animal Farm appealed to political conservatives who saw its worth as a propaganda weapon for deterring socialist associations, in addition to satisfying general audiences. As a result, the CIA secretly funded the 1954 animated film adaption, which was also the first feature-length animated picture in English cinema history, directed by John Halas (1912–95) and Joy Batchelor (1914–91). Orwell’s politics have been scrutinised by critics in the early twenty-first century, but there has been a stronger propensity to recognise the novel as a work of politically informed art rather than plain propaganda.

Conclusion

Pilkington and other human farmers come to the farmhouse at the end of Animal Farm to eat dinner with the pigs. The other animals, who are watching through the glass, are unable to distinguish between pigs and humans. Pigs have started to dress and act like humans. The animals’ understanding that pigs have become as harsh and tyrannical as human farmers is expressed in the book’s closing image. The conclusion also implies that political power is always the same, regardless of who holds it or what ideology is used to explain it. Whether they are pigs or humans, Communists or capitalists, powerful individuals are nasty and selfish. The ending, above all, implies that all powerful individuals are liars and manipulators.Mr. Pilkington and Napoleon are squabbling in our last view of the dinner party because they both tried to cheat at a card game in the same way at the same time. The finale doesn’t provide much hope for a political system that works for everyone. The conclusion, on the other hand, contends that power’s corrupting nature dooms all political systems to failure.