Animal Farm

1 Pages 356 Words

"Twelve voices were shouting in anger and they were all alike. No question, now what had happened to the faces of the pigs the creatures outside looked from pigs to man and from man to pig and to man again but already it was impossible to tell which is which."



Animal Farm by George Orwell is an entertaining story of allegory of the early history of the Soviet Union. This book describes the problems of communism as it was attempted in Russia during the 20th century. Before 1991 the Communist ideology and the Soviet Union were a major threat to the Western Democracies. In Animal Farm Orwell demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of the Russian Communist system also. Orwell intended to criticize the communist regime he saw sweeping through Russia and spreading to Europe and even the United States. Though he agreed with many Marxist principles, Orwell was unable to accept the communist interpretation of socialism because he saw many similarities between the communist governments and the previous czarist regimes in old Russia. Communism, he thought, was inherently hypocritical.

In his self-proclaimed "fairy-story,"Orwell uses his allegorical farm to symbolize the communist system. Though the original intention of overthrowing Mr. Jones (who represents the Czars), is not inherently evil in itself, Napoleon*s subsequent adoption of nearly all of Mr. Jones* principles and harsh mistreatment of the animals proves to the reader that indeed communism is not equality, but just another form of inequality.



The pigs and dogs take most of the power for themselves, thinking that they are the best administrators of government. Eventually the power corrupts them, and they turn on their fellow animals, eliminating competitors through propaganda and bloodshed. This is of course a reference to Stalin, who murdered many of his own people in order to maintain his dictatorship of Russia.

Thanks in part to Animal Farm, much of the Western wo...