| Term Paper Title | Animal Farm |
| # of Words | 1255 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 5.02 |
Animal Farm
PG. 1
Animal Farm
Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his psuedonym George Orwell, is an English
author commonly known to write about political issues. Orwell has been highly acclaimed
and criticized for his novels, including one of his most famous, Animal Farm. In a satirical
form, George Orwell uses personified farm animals to express his views on stalinism in the
novel Animal Farm.
Throughout Orwell's early novels, democratic socialism kept the author from total
despair of all humans(Greenblatt 104). After his better experience in the Spanish Civil War
and the shock of the Nazi-Soviet pact, Orwell developed Animal Farm. The socialism
Orwell believed in was not a hardheaded "realistic" approach to society and polotics but a
rather sentimental, utopian vision of the world as a "raft sailing through space, with,
potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody"(Grennblatt 106).
Animal Farm is a satirical beast fable which has been heralded as Orwell's lightest,
gayest work(Brander 126). It is a novel based on the first thirty years of the Soviet Union, a
real society pursuing the ideal of equality. His book argues that this kind of society has not
worked and could not (Meyers 102). Animal Farm has also been known as a an enter-
taining, witty tale of a farm whose oppressed animals, capable of speech and reason,
overcome a cruel master and set up a revolutionary government(Meyers 103). On another,
more serious level, it is a political allegory, a symbolic tale where all the events and
characters represent events and characters in Russian history since 1917(Meyers 103).
Orwell uses actual historical events to construct Animal Farm, but rearranges them
to fit his plot. Manor Farm is Russia, Mr. Jones the Tsar, the pigs the Bolsheviks who led the
revolution. The humans represent the ruling class, the animals the workers and the peasants.
Old Major, the inspiration of the rebellion, is a combination of Marx, the chief theorist and
Lenin, the actual leader(Meyers 105). Old Major dies before the rebellion just as Lenin did in
the Russian revolution. In actuality Stalin and Trotsky argue over power after Lenin's death,
which Orwell satirizes in Napolean and Snowball.
In Animal Farm, Orwell immediately establishes the Soviet political allegory as Old
Major (Marx/Lenin) describes the exploitation of animals by humans and the statement "all
animals are comrades." The animals continuous singing of "Beasts of England" can be seen
not only as a symbol of the decay of communist notions of a perfect state, but also as
Orwell's more general comment on the decline of true liberty and equality in the west
(Gardner 99).
The progress of the revolution from a common idealism to a state system of leader,
police, and workers happens rather rapidly. The animals take over the farm and the pigs
( Bolsheviks ) emerge as natural organizers. The pigs rduce the principles of animalism in
seven simple commandments and develop a green and white version of the Russian hammer
and sickle flag. Instead, theirs has "a hoof and horn which signifies the future Republic of the
animals which would arise when the human race had been finally overthrown"(Orwell 89).
Orwell demonstrates both the greed and the hypocracy involved in the urge to power when
the clever pigs contribute to none of the work and keep for themselves all the milk and
apples.
During the novel, the pigs continue to gain more and more power. In the pigs uprise
of power, the Seven Commandments are an effective structural device. Their different
alterations resemble the pigs' progressive rise to power. The pigs' gradual acquisition of
priveleges- apples, milk, house, whisky, beer, clothes- leads to the final identification of pig
and human, Communist and capitalist(Gardner 101).
The blurring of the past and the hardening shape of the present, grim, greedy, or
just pragmatic, are accompanied by b...Read entire document
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