Animal Farm (ACS & Catholic High – 2025 Language Arts Tuition)
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ANIMAL FARM
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ANIMAL FARM STUDY NOTES – OVERVIEW
George Orwell
Orwell was a prolific English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His works showed much clarity in language and thought, an awareness of social injustice and an opposition to totalitarianism (where the government sees no limit on its authority and seeks to control every aspect of society).
He is best known for two novels – Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949). 1984 presented a bleak vision of the world divided into three oppressive nations where the government was able to control every single aspect of a person’s life, including his views, feelings and thoughts.
Animal Farm as an Allegorical Satire
Animal Farm can be read on many levels. On one hand, it is an anti-Soviet satire in a pastoral setting featuring two pigs as its main protagonists. It was a critical success and provided him both fame and some fortune.
The book is an allegorical satire. An allegory is a story or literary work that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden commentary on something moral or political.
A satire is the use of humour, irony, ridicule or exaggeration to expose and criticise a serious issue or people’s stupidity and/or vices.
In this novel, Orwell presents an allegory of the Russian Revolution, allowing readers to draw comparisons between historical events and characters in the story.
The Russian Revolution led to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II by the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. Under Nicholas II, the Russian populace endured severe poverty and hardship. The promise of a better life, based on Karl Marx’s communist theories of communal living and social ownership, seemed hopeful when Lenin took power in the 1917 revolution.
Plot Summary
Manor Farm, owned by the harsh Mr. Jones, is taken over by the animals after a revolutionary speech by the dying boar Old Major. He teaches them that men are the source of their suffering and encourages a rebellion. Following his death, pigs Snowball and Napoleon develop his ideas into Animalism. The animals successfully overthrow Jones, rename the farm “Animal Farm,” and prosper without humans.
However, a power struggle emerges between Snowball and Napoleon. Napoleon, using trained dogs to expel Snowball, seizes control and eliminates animal voting rights. He starts to break the commandments he had set, like sleeping in beds, and manipulates the truth to maintain power. The windmill project, initially a source of hope, suffers setbacks and leads to greater hardship for the animals, who are misled into thinking their suffering is for the greater good.
As time passes, the pigs increasingly resemble the humans they overthrew. They rewrite history and the commandments to benefit themselves, leading to a farm where the animals can no longer distinguish between pigs and humans, and the ideal of equality is utterly corrupted.
