George Orwell’s Messages in Animal Farm

A pig named old Major has summoned the other animals who live on a farm to a meeting. He tells them that humans are to blame for all of their problems, and describes a dream he has had of a utopian world in which farm animals reject the drudgery forced on them by humans and without humans they all live a wonderful pastoral life. A few days later, old Major dies. Then, stimulated by the latest bit of cruelty from their master Farmer Jones, the animals spontaneously revolt and evict Jones and the other humans from the farm. The pigs, being the smartest of the animals, declare that they will lead the other animals into old Major’s wondrous socialist paradise where every animal is equal. The other animals innocently agree to the pigs’ leadership. But interestingly, the pigs seem mandated not just to lead but also to lie, and so things don’t quite work out as they had promised. When the other animals notice that the pigs are taking the best food for themselves, they are threatened by the pigs that Jones will return.

• As the days pass, the “socialist” pigs begin taking more and more of the best of everything for themselves. And they steadily grab more power and lie more frequently. By the end of the story the other animals (the ones who have survived Napoleon the pig’s purges) finally realize that the pigs are as bad as the humans in every respect, and the animals are at least as hungry as they were under farmer Jones, and far more overworked.

• This review will address the following questions:• Was George Orwell a disillusioned and broken

revolutionary trying to convert others to his sense of complete hopelessness? Or was Orwell in fact one of the few Englishmen who dared speak the truth about what Stalin was doing to his own country in a hypocritical pretense of socialism that was not socialism at all but rather totalitarianism, in hopes that people would awaken and expect more of their leaders?

• Was Orwell stating that left to their own devices and absent any form of government, humanity would be just fine? Or was he simply warning politicians that the commoners will take only so much thievery and abuse before they revolt? This review will also examine whether it is possible, through persuasion, to convince large masses of people to go completely against their nature. Or do such efforts have to be a combination of tapping into the people’s fears and hopes, coupled with a ruthless practice of imprisoning, torturing, and murdering dissidents?