Book Overview:
(https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/animal-farm/animal-farm-at-a-glance)
'Animal Farm is George Orwell's satire on equality, where all barnyard animals live free from their human masters' tyranny. Inspired to rebel by Major, an old boar, animals on Mr. Jones' Manor Farm embrace Animalism and stage a revolution to achieve an idealistic state of justice and progress. A power-hungry pig, Napoleon, becomes a totalitarian dictator who leads the Animal Farm into "All Animals Are Equal / But Some Are More Equal Than Others" oppression.'
Type of Work: Novel
First Published: August 17, 1945
Genres: Political satire; allegory
Setting: Mr Jones', Old Manor Farm
Main Characters:
- Old Major
- Snowball
- Napoleon
- Squealar
- Boxer
- Mollie
- Benjamin
- Moses
- Jones
- Frederick
- Pilkington
Major Thematic Topics:
- Animalism
- Mob rule
- Virtue
- Religion as a drug
- Distortion of reality
- Death
- False allegiance
- Political corruption
Motifs:
- Rebellion
- Power
- Communism
Major Symbols
- Cold War
- The barn
- The windmill
The 3 most important aspects:
1. Animal Farm is an allegory, which is a story in which concrete and specific characters and situations stand for other characters and situations so as to make a point about them. The main action of Animal Farm stands for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the early years of the Soviet Union. Animalism is really communism. Manor Farm is allegorical of Russia, and the farmer Mr. Jones is the Russian Czar. Old Major stands for either Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin, and the pig named Snowball represents the intellectual revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Napoleon stands for Stalin, while the dogs are his secret police. The horse Boxer stands in for the proletariat, or working class.
2. The setting of Animal Farm is a dystopia, which is an imagined world that is far worse than our own, as opposed to a utopia, which is an ideal place or state. Other dystopian novels include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Orwell's own 1984.
3. The most famous line from the book is "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." This line is emblematic of the changes that George Orwell believed followed the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. Rather than eliminating the capitalist class system it was intended to overthrow, the revolution merely replaced it with another hierarchy. The line is also typical of Orwell's belief that those in power usually manipulate language to their own benefit.
Notes:
All the symbols of Jones' reign — nose-rings, dog-chains, knives — are tossed into a celebratory bonfire.
Painted in "great white letters" on the side of the barn.
To help the animals understand the general precepts of Animalism, Snowball reduces the Seven Commandments to a single slogan: "Four legs good, two legs bad."
Cows' milk and windfallen apples are mixed every day into the pigs' mash.
Seizure of the new pups that he will raise to be the vicious guard dogs
News of the rebellion spreads to other farms (by way of pigeons released by Snowball and Napoleon)
The creation of military decorations, the naming of the battle, and the decision to fire Jones' gun twice a year all suggest the animals' love of ceremony and the slow but sure transformation of Animal Farm into a place governed by martial law more than the Seven Commandments of Animalism.
All Benjamin believes is what he knows for sure, the sum total of which is that, "Windmill or no windmill, life will go on as it always had gone on — that is, badly."
Combination of relentless propaganda and threats of violence comprise Napoleon's philosophy of leadership
The pigs move into the farmhouse and begin sleeping in beds, which Squealer excuses on the grounds that the pigs need their rest after the daily strain of running the farm.
Grammatical revision of commandments
Napoleon when he is seen is now heralded by a black cockerel
Pigs walking on two legs
The flag of Animal Farm consists of a green field with a hoof and a horn.
Everything has come full circle
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