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Masterplots II, British Fiction Series, Rev. Ed. Animal Farm Author: George Orwell Given Name: Eric Arthur Blair Born: June 25, 1903; Motihari, Bengal, India Died: January 21, 1950; London, England Type of Work: Allegorical beast fable Time of Work: The 1940's Locale: A British farm First Published: 1945 Principal Characters MAJOR, a prophetic pig, the instigator of the revolution SNOWBALL, a pig orator, an early leader of the animals NAPOLEON, a forceful pig dictator of the animals SQUEALER, a pig public relations officer BOXER, a hardworking cart horse CLOVER, a motherly mare BENJAMIN, a cynical donkey, the farm's oldest animal MOLLIE, a young and foolish mare MOSES, a prophetic raven, the farmer's spy MR. JONES, the original owner of the farm The Novel Because Animal Farm is a thoroughgoing allegory, either specifically of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath or, more generally, of the dangers of any political revolution, it is two stories at once: the surface plot story of the events leading up to and following the revolt of a group of farm animals against their human oppressor, and the underlying conceptual story of political revolution for which the surface story stands. The surface story begins almost immediately with the beast fable convention that animals can think, talk, and feel, as the animals gather together to hear the dream of revolution by the old pig, Major. After Major reminds the animals of their oppressed life, he incites them to revolution by telling them that all the evils they experience spring from man, the only creature that consumes without producing. Shortly after laying down the rules of what he proposes to be a new order, old Major dies peacefully in his sleep. The pigs, the cleverest of the animals on the farm, develop Major's teachings into a coherent system which they call Animalism and which they secretly teach to the rest of the animals in preparation for the revolution which the Major has foretold. Rather than as the result of a conscious and prearranged effort, the rebellion, when it comes a few months later, develops as a result of hunger and neglect caused by Mr. Jones. The animals break into the food shed and drive the farmer and his wife off the land. Immediately thereafter, in a series of acts of comradeship, the animals change the name of the farm from Manor Farm to Animal Farm and list Seven Commandments on the barn wall, which the pigs have developed from the teachings of old Major. Basically, the Commandments suggest that whatever is human is an enemy, that whatever is animal is a friend, and that all animals are equal. The first indication that all are not equal, however, occurs when the pigs set themselves up as the leaders and take for themselves the milk usually mixed with the animals' mash. The rest of the novel is structured around the positive action of the animals' attempt to be self-sufficient and the negative action of the gradual attainment of preferential power by the pigs. Initially, because the animals work harder for themselves than they had for the farmer, their harvest is a great success. Snowball is at first the leader in organizing them into various committees and in attempting to educate them, while Squealer is the mouthpiece who, by means of fancy doubletalk, convinces the animals that the pigs deserve certain special privileges. When Mr. Jones and some of his friends attempt a recapture of Animal Farm, the animals rebuff their enemies, decorate Snowball as "Animal Hero, First Class," and commemorate the event as the Battle of the Cowshed. Soon afterward, Snowball develops his most ambitious plan: the building of a windmill so that the animals can have electrical power. It is the issue of the windmill which leads Napoleon to mount a coup, with the help of several fierce dogs he has trained in secret, against Snowball. When Snowball is expelled, Napoleon begins his takeover as absolute dictator, beginning with the banning of debate and continuing with the increasing assumption of special privileges for the pigs. The most insidious part of Napoleon's campaign for gaining complete power is his manipulation of the past. With the help of the rhetoric of Squealer and the fierceness of the dogs, he convinces the animals that past events are not as they remember them—for example, that Snowball's part in the Battle of the Cowshed was exaggerated, that Napoleon had never really opposed the windmill, and that in fact Snowball was a traitor. Furthermore, under Napoleon's regime, the original Seven Commandments are gradually altered and reduced to suit the specific desires of the ruling pigs. Soon Napoleon enters into agreements with humans for trade on the farm; works the animals endlessly to build the windmill; engages in the same kinds of vices, such as drinking and greed, of which Mr. Jones was guilty; and in general rules the animals even more harshly than did their oppressor before the revolution. Snowball, even though he is never seen again, is used as a scapegoat who is responsible for all animal hardships. Any attempt to disobey Napoleon is met with violent retaliation; some animals, in an act of mass hallucination, even admit that they are responsible for working with the phantom Snowball and are promptly slaughtered by Napoleon's fierce dogs. At the end of the novel, the original Seven Commandments have been reduced to one, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," and when the pigs meet with several human farmers to work out a trade agreement, the other animals who look in at their meeting cannot really tell the difference between the men and the pigs. The Characters By necessity, in allegory characters are two-dimensional figures who are created to serve the purposes of the underlying conceptual framework. Because they must have a one-to-one relationship with the thematic targets of the satiric thrust of the work, they cannot possess the complexity of real people in the real world. Some of the minor figures in Animal Farm are clearly representative of simple human qualities. For example, the sheep suggest mindless followers who are content to bleat the simplistic slogan, "Four legs good, two legs bad," which the pigs teach them. Mollie, the young mare, represents foolish vanity, content to remain in harness as long as she is pampered and petted. Benjamin, the donkey, is the cynicism of one who has seen everything and hopes for nothing. Boxer and Clover are well-meaning but stupid brute workers, sensitive and caring but not intelligent enough to challenge authority. In terms of the specific allegory Orwell seems to have in mind, however, it is the pigs who are most specifically drawn and who bear the most pointed one-to-one relationship with real figures. Most critics agree that Major is the chief theoretician of socialism, Karl Marx, whereas Snowball is Communism's first great leader and thinker, Leon Trotsky, and Napoleon is its first dictator, Joseph Stalin. The story thus mirrors in satiric form the history of the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution to World War II, when Stalin entered into various deals with Germany and the Allies, presented in the allegory as neighboring human farmers. Themes and Meanings The animals thus are presented as illustrative of the utopian dream of socialism pitted against the vices of capitalism represented by the humans in the story. Neither political ideology is presented in a favorable light, but whereas the evils of capitalism are taken for granted, it is the futility of the socialist ideal on which the work primarily focuses. Yet the means by which it levels this criticism at Communism—that is, in terms of a relatively simple and two-dimensional beast fable—does little to illuminate either the virtues or the vices of that complex ideology. Animal Farm perhaps works best not as a specific allegory of the Russian Revolution but rather as a fable about the basic nature of human beings, both in isolation and in groups, which militates against any utopian ideal. What Orwell has seized upon is precisely those qualities of animals that humans share which make such an ideal impossible—qualities such as sloth, stupidity, fear, and greed. The central irony of the fable is that although the animals initially rebel against the humans because of behavior which humans usually call "beastly," the animals themselves, as the work progresses, become more and more like humans—that is, more and more base and beastly. What is most demoniacally human about the pigs is their use of language not only to manipulate the immediate behavior of the animals through propaganda, emotive language, and meaningless doubletalk but also to manipulate history, and thus challenge the nature of actuality itself. This manipulation, however, is only one primary means of the pigs' control; another, equally important, is the threat of brute force as manifested by Napoleon's pack of vicious trained dogs. In the final image of the allegory, the realization is that humans prove to be no better than animals, and animals prove to be no better than humans. The great ideal of the windmill, itself a Quixotic gesture of idealism, cannot be achieved because the animals, like humans, are basically limited by their own natures, and because nature itself is blindly indifferent to the aspirations of man. Orwell's own pessimistic view in the work seems to be echoed by the cynical donkey, Benjamin: "Things never had been, nor ever could be much better or worse—hunger, hardship, disappointment being . . . the unalterable law of life." The law of man is the law of the jungle after all; the truth of "power corrupts" is the same as the truth of "the fittest shall survive." Critical Context Animal Farm was George Orwell's first book to achieve financial success and has been one of his most critically acclaimed books, having been called his finest work, a masterpiece, and a classic. Although it has occasionally been criticized for the predictability of its satire and its ideological muddle, there is little doubt that it is the best-known and most widely read allegory in twentieth century literature. As a beast fable, it takes its place in a long line of such works, beginning with the fables of Aesop and continuing up to such modern fables as Richard Adams' Watership Down (1972). As a bitter satire on the human race, it is in the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain. Its anti-utopian message anticipates the even more bleak and barren social landscape painted by Orwell in his subsequent fantasy of future society, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Because of the classic simplicity of its structure, the genius of its conception, and the centrality in the twentieth century of its political theme, Animal Farm is destined to remain a minor classic of its genre. It speaks both to the human aspiration for perfectibility and freedom and to human despair at the inherent limitations of life. Charles E. May BibliographyHollis, Christopher. A Study of George Orwell: The Man and His Works, 1956. Hunter, Lynette. George Orwell: The Search for a Voice, 1984. Lee, Robert A. Orwell's Fiction, 1969. Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader's Guide to George Orwell, 1977. Norris, Christopher, ed. Inside the Myth: Orwell, Views from the Left, 1984. |
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