Animal Farm

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Novels

Animal Farm
1st US edition cover
Author	George Orwell
Cover artist	Christopher Corr
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Satire
Publisher	Secker and Warburg (London)
Publication date	17 August 1945
Media type	Print ( Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	112 pp (UK paperback edition)
ISBN	0-452-28424-4 (present)

Animal Farm is a novella by George Orwell, and is the most famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. Published in 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era. Orwell, a democratic socialist, and a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Josef Stalin, and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War.

The book was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005) and was number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels.

Overview

The plot is an allegory in which animals play the roles of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal; soon disparities start to emerge between the different species or classes. The novel describes how a society's ideologies can be changed and manipulated by individuals in positions of power, including how the idea of utopia is seemingly impossible with the corruption of power.

Characters and their possible real life counterparts

The events and characters in Animal Farm parallel the early history of the Soviet Union; Orwell makes this explicit in the case of Napoleon, whom he directly connects to Stalin in a letter of 17 March 1945 to the publisher.

The other characters have their parallels in the real world, but care should be taken with these comparisons, as Orwell's intent was not always explicit and they often simply represent generalised concepts.

Pigs

Old Major is the inspiration which fuels the Revolution and the book. According to one interpretation, he could be based upon both Karl Marx and Lenin. As a socialist, George Orwell may have agreed with much of Marx, and even respected aspects of Lenin. According to this interpretation, the satire in Animal Farm is not of Marxism, or of Lenin's revolution, but of the corruption that occurred later although very similar to it. However, according to Christopher Hitchens:

Hitchens goes on to agree, however, that in the book "the aims and principles of the Russian Revolution are given face-value credit throughout; this is a revolution betrayed, not a revolution that is monstrous from its inception". Though Old Major is presented positively, Orwell does slip in some flaws, such as his admission that he has largely been free of the abuse the rest of the animals have had to suffer.

Napoleon, a Berkshire boar, is the main tyrant of Animal Farm. Napoleon begins to gradually build up his power, using puppies he took from mother dogs Jessie and Bluebell, which he raised to be vicious dogs as his secret police. After driving Snowball off the farm, Napoleon usurps full power, using false propaganda from Squealer and threats and intimidation from the dogs to keep the other animals in line. Among other things he gradually changes the Commandments to allow himself privileges and justify his dictatorial rule. By the end of the book Napoleon and his fellow pigs have learned to walk upright and started to behave similar to humans. Orwell modeled him after Joseph Stalin, who set up a dictatorship whose repression and despotism was far worse than that of the Imperial Russian government supplanted by the Bolsheviks. (In the French version of Animal Farm, Napoleon is called César, the French spelling of Caesar.)

Snowball, a white boar, is Napoleon's rival. He is inspired by Leon Trotsky. He wins over most animals, but is driven out of the farm in the end by Napoleon. Snowball genuinely works for the good of the farm and devises plans to help the animals achieve their vision of a utopia but is chased from the farm by Napoleon and his dogs and rumours are spread about him (by Napoleon) to make him seem evil and corrupt and that he is secretly sabotaging the animal's efforts to improve the farm. His name is likely a reference to Trotsky's having been killed by one of Stalin's henchmen with an ice pick.

Squealer, a small fat porker, serves as Napoleon's public speaker. Inspired by Vyacheslav Molotov and the Russian paper Pravda, Squealer twists and abuses the language to excuse, justify, and extol all of Napoleon's actions. He represents all the propaganda Stalin used to justify his actions. In all of his work, George Orwell made it a point to show how politicians used language. Squealer limits debate by complicating it, and he confuses and disorients, making claims that the pigs need the extra luxury they are taking in order to function properly, for example. However, when questions persist, he usually uses the threat of Mr. Jones's return as justification for the pigs' privileges. Squealer uses statistics to convince the animals that life is getting better and better. Most of the animals have only dim memories of life before the revolution; therefore they are convinced.

Minimus is a poetical pig who writes the second and third national anthems of Animal Farm after the singing of "Beasts of England" is banned, representing admirers of Stalin both inside and outside the USSR such as Maxim Gorky. As Minimus composed the replacement of "Beasts of England", he may equate to the three main composers of the National Anthem of the Soviet Union which replaced The Internationale -- Gabriel El-Registan, Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov, and Sergey Mikhalkov.

Pinkeye is a small piglet who tastes Napoleon's food for poisoning.

The Piglets are hinted to be the children of Napoleon (albeit not truly noted in the novel), and are the first generation of animals to actually be subjugated to his idea of animal inequality.

The Rebel Pigs are pigs who complain about Napoleon's takeover of the farm but are quickly silenced and later executed. This is based on the Great Purge during Stalin's regime. The closest parallels to the Rebel Pigs may be Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev.

Humans

Mr. Jones represents Nicholas II of Russia, the deposed Tsar, who had been facing severe financial difficulties in the days leading up to the 1917 Revolution. The character is also a nod towards Louis XVI. There are also several implications that he represents an autocratic but ineffective capitalist, incapable of running the farm and looking after the animals properly. Jones is a very heavy drinker and the animals revolt on him after he drinks so much that he does not feed them nor does he take care of them. Ironically Napoleon himself becomes almost obsessed with drinking.

Mr. Frederick is the tough owner of Pinchfield, a well-kept neighbouring farm. He represents Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in general.

Mr. Pilkington is the easy-going but crafty owner of Foxwood, a neighbouring farm overgrown with weeds, as described in the book. He represents the western powers, such as Britain and the U.S. The card game at the very end of the novel is a metaphor for the Tehran Conference, where the parties flatter each other, all the while cheating at the game. The irony in this last scene is present because of all of the Pigs being civil and kind to the humans, defying all for which they had fought. This was present in the Tehran Conference with the Alliance that the Soviet Union formed with the United States and Britain; capitalist countries that the Soviet Union had fought in the early years of the revolution. At the end of the novel, both Napoleon and Pilkington draw the Ace of Spades (which in most games, is the highest-ranking card) at the same time and begin fighting loudly, symbolizing the beginning of tension between the U.S. and Soviet superpowers.

Mr. Whymper is a man hired by Napoleon to represent Animal Farm in human society. He is loosely based on Western intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw and, especially, Lincoln Steffens, who visited the U.S.S.R. in 1919. and praised what they saw.

Horses

There are three horses: Clover, Mollie, and Boxer

Boxer is one of the main characters. He is the tragic avatar of the working class, or proletariat: loyal, kind, dedicated, and the most physically-strong animal on the farm, but naive and slow. His ignorance and blind trust towards his leaders led to his death and their profit. In particular, his heroic physical work represents the Stakhanovite movement. His maxim of "I will work harder" is reminiscent of Jurgis Rudkus from the Upton Sinclair novel The Jungle.

Clover is Boxer's friend and a fellow draft horse. She helps and cares for Boxer when he splits his hoof. She blames herself for forgetting the original Seven Commandments when Squealer revises them. Clover is compassionate, as is shown when she protects the baby ducklings during Major's speech; albeit made out to be somewhat vain in the opening of the novel by the narrator, who remarks that she never "recovered" her figure after giving birth to her fourth foal. She is also upset when animals are executed by the dogs, and is held in great respect by three younger horses who ultimately replace Boxer.

Mollie is a self-centered and vain white mare who likes wearing ribbons in her mane, eating sugar cubes (which represent luxury) and being pampered and groomed by humans. She represents upper-class people, the bourgeoisie and nobility who fled to the West after the Russian Revolution and effectively dominated the Russian diaspora. Accordingly, she quickly leaves for another farm and is only once mentioned again.

Significance

The allegory that the book employs allows it to be read on a variety of different levels.

Orwell wrote the book following his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, which are described in another one of his books, Homage to Catalonia. He intended it to be a strong condemnation of what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original socialist ideals. For the preface of a Ukrainian edition he prepared in 1947, Orwell described what gave him the idea of setting the book on a farm.

This Ukrainian edition was an early propaganda use of the book. It was printed to be distributed among the Soviet citizens of Ukraine who were some of the many millions of displaced persons throughout Europe at the end of the Second World War. The American occupation forces considered the edition to be propaganda printed on illegal presses, and handed 1,500 confiscated copies of Animal Farm over to the Soviet authorities. The politics in the book also affected Britain, with Orwell reporting that Ernest Bevin was "terrified" that it may cause embarrassment if published before the 1945 general election.

In recent years the book has been used to compare new movements that overthrow heads of a corrupt and undemocratic government or organization, only to eventually become corrupt and oppressive themselves as they succumb to the trappings of power and begin using violent and dictatorial methods to keep it. Such analogies have been used for many former African colonies such as Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose succeeding African-born rulers were accused of being as corrupt as, or worse than, the European colonists they supplanted.

The book also clearly ponders whether a focus of power in one person is healthy for a society. The book leaves the ending slightly ambiguous in this regard.

Perhaps the largest overriding theme in "Animal Farm" is the famous quote by Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Allusions to history, geography and current science

• Manor Farm is based on Chalk Farm in Willingdon, Eastbourne.
• The refusal of the Humans to refer to Animal Farm by its new name (still calling it Manor Farm) may be indicative of the diplomatic limbo in which the Soviets existed following their early history.
• Mr. Jones' last ditch effort to re-take the farm (The Battle of the Cowshed) is analogous to the Russian Civil War in which the western capitalist governments sent soldiers to try to remove the Bolsheviks from power.
• The Battle of Cowshed is fought with similar tactics to the Battle of Cowpens in the American Revolution
• When Napoleon and Snowball argue about how Animal Farm should be ruled, Napoleon favours acquiring weapons to defend the farm while Snowball favoured getting other farms (countries) to rebel. This is similar to Stalin wanting "Socialism in one country" and Trotsky's theory of "Permanent Revolution."
• Squealer constantly changing the commandments on Napoleon's orders may refer to the constant line of adjustments to the Communist theory by the people in power. Also, his lies to animals of past events they cannot remember refers to the revision of history texts to glorify Stalin during his regime.
• After Old Major dies, his skull is placed on display on a tree stump. Similarly, Lenin's embalmed body was put on display in Lenin's Tomb in Red Square post-mortem, where it still remains. It should also be noted that the tomb of Karl Marx is adorned by an extremely large bust of his likeness which lends more credibility to Old Major being a closer reference to Karl Marx than to Lenin. Marx's tomb is located in Highgate Cemetery, London.

Version of Horn and Hoof Flag, based on hammer and Sickle.

• The flag of Animal Farm consists of a green field with a hoof and a horn. According to the book, the green represents the fields of England, with the hoof and horn being an analog to the hammer and sickle.
• When Napoleon steals Snowball’s idea for a windmill, the windmill can be considered a symbol of the Soviet Five-Year Plans, a concept developed by Trotsky and adopted by Stalin, who, after banning Trotsky from the Soviet Union, claimed them to be his idea. The failure of the windmill to generate the expected creature comforts and subsequent search for saboteurs is probably a reference to accusations and a show trial against British engineers who were working on electrification projects in the USSR.
• Moses the raven leaving the farm for a while and then returning is similar to the Russian Orthodox Church going underground and then being brought back to give the workers hope.
• Boxer's motto, "Napoleon is always right" is synonymous with «Il Duce ha sempre ragione» ("Mussolini is always right"), a chant used to hail Benito Mussolini during his rule of Italy from 1922 to 1943.
• During the rise of Napoleon, he ordered the collection of all the hens' eggs. In an act of defiance, the hens destroyed their eggs rather than give them to Napoleon. During Stalin's collectivization period in the early 1930s, many Ukrainian peasants burned their crops and farms rather than handing them over to the government.
• Napoleon's mass executions, of which many were unfair for the alleged crimes, is similar to Stalin executing his political enemies for various crimes after they were tortured and forced to falsify confessions.
• The four pigs that defy Napoleon's will are comparable with the purged party members during the Great Purge — Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Kamenev and many others.
• Napoleon replaces the farm anthem " Beasts of England" with an inane composition by the pig poet Minimus ("Animal Farm, Animal Farm / Never through me / Shall thou come to harm"). In 1943, Stalin replaced the old national anthem " the Internationale" with "the Hymn of the Soviet Union." The old Internationale glorified the revolution and "the people." The original version of the Hymn of the Soviet Union glorified Stalin so heavily that after his death in 1953, entire sections of the anthem had to be replaced or removed. Orwell could have also been referring to Napoleon Bonaparte's banning of the French national hymn, La Marseillaise in 1799.
• Napoleon works with Mr. Frederick, who eventually betrays Animal Farm and destroys the windmill. Though Animal Farm repels the human attack, many animals are wounded and killed. This is similar to Stalin’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in 1939, which was later betrayed in 1941 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Though the Soviet Union won the war, it came at a tremendous price of roughly 8.5-15 million Soviet soldiers (unconfirmed) and many civilians, resulting in an incredible estimated 20 million dead, as well as the utter destruction of the Western Soviet Union and its prized collective farms that Stalin had created in the 1930s. The detonation of the windmill and the battle that ensued there could also be a reference to the Battle of Stalingrad. The selling of the farm's excess timber supply could represent the offering of raw materials to the United States in exchange for weapons of war under the Lend-Lease.
• Napoleon changing Animal Farm back to Manor echoes the Red Army’s name change from the "Workers' and Peasants' Red Army" to the "Soviet Army" to appear as a more appealing and professional organization rather than an army of the common people.
• The dogs may be an allegory to the NKVD ( KGB), the elite police force who ruled by terror under Stalin's hand.
• The character of Boxer could be an allusion to the financial state of Russia at the time of publication.
• The term "four legs good, two legs bad" could be symbolic for the simplification of the April Theses, for workers to understand it better.
• Napoleon once creates and awards himself with the Order of the Green Banner, a reference to the Soviet Union's Order of the Red Banner.

British censorship and suppressed preface

During World War II it became apparent to Orwell that anti-Russian literature was not something which most major publishing houses would touch — including his regular publisher Gollancz. One publisher he sought rejected his book on the grounds of government advice — although the assumed civil servant who gave the order was later found to be a Soviet spy.

Orwell originally prepared a preface which complains about British government suppression of his book, self-imposed British self-censorship and how the British people were suppressing criticism of the USSR, their World War II ally. "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. ... [Things are] kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact." Somewhat ironically, the preface itself was censored and is not published with most editions of the book.

Controversies

• The estate of Orwell declared itself "hostile" to the publication of Snowball's Chance, a 2002 parody of Animal Farm by U.S. author John Reed.

Adaptations

• 1954 animated film — The book was the basis of an animated feature film in 1954 (Britain's first full-length animated movie), directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor and quietly commissioned by the American CIA. This version softened the theme of the story slightly by reducing the role of Moses, the character representing religion. It also added an epilogue where the other animals successfully revolt against the pigs immediately after the novel's iconic concluding imagery is depicted.
• 1996 stage adaptation — Popular stage adaptation by renowned British theatre director and playwright Ian Wooldridge. "Ian Wooldridge's adaptation makes the text as engagingly relevant as ever", London Evening Standard. Originally performed in 1996 by Newcastle Playhouse and first published in 2003 by Nick Hern Books, London. The production has seen recent performances in 2003 by The Wild Rice Theatre Company at The Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel, Singapore, in 2004 by Northern Stage at the Courtyard Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse and in 2006 by Eglesfield Players at Queen's College, Oxford.
• 1999 live-action film — A live action film directed by John Stephenson, with voices by Kelsey Grammer as Snowball, Patrick Stewart as Napoleon, and Ian Holm as Squealer. Despite a few differences (such as completely different songs), the plot generally resembles that of the book. The film diverges from the book with an additional epilogue in which Jesse the dog and several animals escape and return years later to a post-Napoleon era Animal Farm. This is therefore an update which could be seen as an analogy to the fall of the Soviet Union. In the film, Jesse, one of the female dogs, is now the main character, protagonist, and narrator.

Editions

• ISBN 0-582-02173-1 ( paper text, 1989)
• ISBN 0-15-107255-8 ( hardcover, 1990)
• ISBN 0-582-06010-9 (paper text, 1991)
• ISBN 0-679-42039-8 (hardcover, 1993)
• ISBN 0-606-00102-6 ( prebound, 1996)
• ISBN 0-15-100217-7 (hardcover, 1996, Anniversary Edition)
• ISBN 0-452-27750-7 ( paperback, 1996, Anniversary Edition)
• ISBN 0-451-52634-1 ( mass market paperback, 1996, Anniversary Edition)
• ISBN 0-582-53008-3 (1996)
• ISBN 1-56000-520-3 ( cloth text, 1998, Large Type Edition)
• ISBN 0-7910-4774-1 (hardcover, 1999)
• ISBN 0-451-52536-1 (paperback, 1999)
• ISBN 0-7641-0819-0 (paperback, 1999)
• ISBN 0-8220-7009-X ( e-book, 1999)
• ISBN 0-7587-7843-0 (hardcover, 2002)
• ISBN 0-15-101026-9 (hardcover, 2003, with Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• ISBN 0-452-28424-4 (paperback, 2003, Centennial Edition)
• ISBN 0-8488-0120-2 (hardcover)
• ISBN 0-03-055434-9 (hardcover) Animal Farm with Connections
• ISBN 0-395-79677-6 (hardcover) Animal Farm & Related Readings, 1997
• anulcam 0-237-74-87 (softcover) animal farm