Animal Farm - The Biggest Pig in the Barnyard
Uploaded by JarJarBinks on Jun 19, 2005
The story of "Animal Farm" is set on Manor Farm, where the animals are badly treated by their cruel and incompetent owner Mr Jones. A spirit of revolt grows among the animals, inspired by Major, the old boar, who develops a philosophy known as "Animalism", which urges animals to revolt against their human masters, to take control of the agricultural system and to run it in their own interests. After Major's death the animals seize their chance to rebel against Jones and succeed in ousting him and taking control of the farm, which they rename Animal Farm. The leading role is taken by the pigs, portrayed as the most intelligent of the animals, and after the success of the revolution a power-struggle breaks out between two of their number, Napoleon and Snowball. With the aid of a trained pack of dogs, Napoleon banishes Snowball from the farm and makes himself a barnyard dictator. From then on, the farm is run in the interests of Napoleon and the pigs. One by one, the principles of Animalism are abandoned and the other animals are treated as badly by the pigs as they were by Jones.
Orwell intended the book as a satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution and of the way in which Communism had developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Major personifies Marx, Snowball Trotsky, Napoleon Stalin and Jones the Tsar. Other animals on the farm stand not for individual historical figures but for types- for example the simple-minded but strong and good-hearted horse Boxer stands for that section of the Soviet working class which continued to support Communism wholeheartedly even during the Stalinist era. The dogs represent the security apparatus of the Red Army and NKVD, the pig Squealer the propaganda system, the mare Mollie who deserts Animal Farm the Russian émigré community, and so on. The allegory is somewhat simplified- there is, for example, no character precisely equivalent to Lenin- but most of the main developments in Soviet history have their equivalents in the book- the revolution, the Stalin-Trotsky split, the Five Year Plans (symbolised by the building of a windmill), the purges, the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the German invasion of 1941.
Orwell wrote the book in the winter of 1943/44, at the height of the Second World War. To criticise Russia in Britain at this point in history took courage, as there was a consensus on both...