Animal Farm - Themes

George Orwell's allegorical novel, ‘Animal Farm' addresses many notions involved in the Russian Revolution, a catastrophic failure in the eyes of the world. A dictatorship set up in the stead of communism, an endless stream of lies and propaganda, as well as political agenda that had saturated the Soviet. It retells of the emergence and development of Soviet communism in a fable form; ‘Animal Farm' allegorizes the rise of power of the dictator, Joseph Stalin and the revolution started by the people of Russia, which, in the end, destroyed and betrayed the people of Russia. In the novel, the overthrow of Jones by a [democratic?] coalition of animals, gives way to the consolidation of just about absolute power among the pigs. The pigs in ‘Animal Farm', namely Napoleon, Squealer, and to a small extent, Snowball, establish themselves as the ruling class, the same way the intelligentsia of Russia began to dictate the revolutionists, thus corrupting and further more, misusing and abusing the socialist ideals of the Soviet Union.

Orwell has an unusual perspective on the entirety of the Russian Revolution. He regards himself as the ‘exposer' of unpleasant truths about human society. George Orwell rewrote the Russian Revolution as ‘Animal Farm' to expose the ‘soviet myth' as he called it. He saw the mindless zombie-like acceptance of everything Stalin did in the name of socialism as damaging to the entire theoretical concept of socialism. The author believed that there always was something fundamentally flawed with human nature, and successfully portrayed it in ‘Animal Farm'. Unfortunately, Orwell had trouble expressing his views as ‘Animal Farm' was repeatedly rejected, one of which was a letter from T.S.Eliot that read, "We have no conviction that this the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the current time."
Although Orwell himself believed strongly in socialist society, he felt that the Soviet Union realized these ideals in a perverse form. Orwell shows the gradual disintegrations of the Seven Commandments as well as Squealer's (Animal Farm's equivalent of propaganda) elaborate justifications for the pigs' blatantly unprincipled actions. Eventually, the Seven Commandments were replaced by One Commandment, ‘All Animals Are Equal But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others'. Thus his novel critiques the violence of Stalin's regime against the Russian proletariats.

Through ‘Animal Farm', Orwell uses characters representative of the players in the Russian Revolution to retell the revolution in a sugar coated metaphor. Early on in the novel, Major(Karl Marx), introduces to the animals the ideas of communism, later to be called Animalism by the dictating pigs, as well as a Revolution, which he labelled ‘Rebellion'. Using simplistic language, Orwell simplifies and clarifies human behaviour. This simplistic approach allows people to stand back and mostly ignore the characters, to focus more on the issues that are involved. ‘Animal Farm' is presented to readers as a world so unlike our own, to show that it is exactly like our own.

This idea is relative to the novel's readers, but only to those who have prior knowledge of the Russian Revolution. The notions of corrupting of socialist ideals relate mostly to sociologists, but as a student, it is also important to learn of the sufferings brought on by dictatorship, and how easily humans are able to manipulate, intimidate and tyrannise the lower classes.