Animal Farm, published in 1956 and written by George Orwell, famous author of other works such as 1984 and Such, Such Were the Joys, is a satirical humorous book depicting an alternate world in which an totalitarian animal society is constructed and led by a tyrannical, curly-tailed dictator. In the setting of an animal farm, Orwell tells the dangers and short comings of a totalitarian state, the means and usage of propaganda to further instigate public trust, and how greed and corruption affects both animals and men, consuming them both to the point where they are no longer distinguishable from one another.
During the duration of the story, the reader can pick up on Orwell’s distinct tones and opinions that reflected the current time frame of Orwell’s own surroundings. Using his own ideals and feelings from the events that were happening around him, he used these as a basis for his book. One good example of this statement is the pig Napoleon, a greedy, tyrannical, dictator who would use any means to accomplish his own goals, regardless of the consequences or pain it brings upon the animal society, so as long as it benefits him. This clearly portrays the concept of the many totalitarian states in the world, controlled by an evil dictator who falls short of nothing to consummate power, many of which were infamous during Orwell’s time. A pig short of stature or looks, Napoleon used his infinite charm and public social skills to manipulate the animal society within the farm repeatedly until he obtained leadership skills. Napoleon himself was the by-product of an invisible social structure that was present already, even before the animal uprising. Being on the lower rungs of pig rank, Napoleon shows the age old tale of a shunned soul seeking revenge, power, and retribution to those who cast him aside. In order for the story as well as the animal rebellion to develop, a leader was obviously needed and Napoleon took the chance to become a leader, to obtain the power that he could never have wielded under any other possible situation.
The main theme present in the story is oppression, the act of controlling the people and declining their right to freedom. The animal farm in the story begins as a budding society, one of newly emerging rules and rights. As time goes on and leadership changes hands, it starts to conform to the ideals of its leader, Napoleon. With no one available with enough intelligence to realize their predicament or keen enough to think deeply about the complex events that surround them, the dictator Napoleon readily takes advantage of such disadvantages and boasts a fearsome army of merciless dogs to anyone who says otherwise. Napoleon himself emulates the perfect impression of an dictator, forcing the animals on the farm to adapt to his ideals, forcing them to believe what he believes as well as praise him for the seeming endless amount of work he does to preserve their so called “freedom and integrity”. Napoleon soon goes to new peaks by establishing a law to title him a name of a higher respect,
“Napoleon was now never spoken of simply as “Napoleon.” He was always referred to in formal styles as “our Leader, Comrade Napoleon,” and the pigs liked to invent for him such titles as Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep-fold, Duckling’s Friend, and the like. You would often hear one hen remark to another, “Under the guidance of our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days”; or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, “Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!”
Undermining his fellow companions, Napoleon starts twisting the public trust and opinion, forcing them to think that he is their savior in an effort to control more power over the majority of the animals. Using advantage of his superior intellect as well as perceptive sense of reality, he manipulates them into a mass of ignorance that would follow anything that claimed to be a leader.
The setting in Animal Farm is as the title suggests an animal farm. For years the animals on the farm have been forced to toil endlessly, working off blood, sweat, and tears for their human oppressors. Giving them human traits, George Orwell soon turns the animal into intelligent beings who understand the root of their oppression, the humans that claim to be the animal’s masters. Under the wisdom and guidance of their departed leader and along with the new found support of the sagely pigs, the animals succeed in throwing off the shackles of oppression only to find themselves slowly being immersed into a new society, reminiscent of the ones they fought so hard to free themselves of.
The setting is an important factor for the character’s development in the story, a small confined farm where no knowledge or education is given beyond a certain point, an effort to keep the ignorant public mass reliant on its tyrannical leaders.
My opinion on why George Orwell wrote this book is reflected on the times that he lived through before and after he wrote this novel. The story takes themes and events from his own personal life of when he was a soldier, a period of his life that he draws much inspiration from. Being completely immersed in a lifestyle of ill-minded warfare, politicians with ulterior motives, and the chaos that raged all throughout the world, Orwell took his thoughts and opinions and formed them into Animal Farm, a book much critically acclaimed as a “dark humorous read” and as a book that clearly depicts Marxian themes. The book itself describes and delves into the darker overtones of the social structure of society, and the power struggle between the innocent masses and the powerful minority. Much reminiscent of his early work, 1984, it focuses itself on the theme of oppression, a theme that George Orwell himself seems infatuated with to keep at bay in his novels.
During the entire read of Animal Farm, a reader periodically gets the distinct feeling that George Orwell is subliminally passing the message along that the public as well as the individual should think for himself, to not let his own freedom slip away into the hands of men who would do nothing to preserve that freedom, an obvious attempt to criticize those who do oppress or those who let themselves be oppressed. One broad idea that inspires the reader that Orwell continually portrays during the book is that by living life as such, that man is no different from animals as said by himself during the final passage of the book, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Touching off darker tones of a society that bases itself on systems of hierarchy, George Orwell tells a familiar tale of blissful ignorance and destruction in Animal Farm.
