Animal Symbolism In Animal Farm By George Orwell

During Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia, communism was the main political movement that was at its peak during Stalin’s rule. George Orwell portrays this exact same situation in his novel Animal Farm. In the novel, Orwell basically depicts this exact same scenario but with animals as symbolic representations of real people in Stalin’s Russia. In Orwell’s novel, the animal that is the symbolic representation of Stalin is a pig named Napoleon. Orwell was very clever in this selection of an animal to represent Stalin because pigs are known to be very clever and cunning, like Stalin was in his time. One example of how Orwell incorporates this idea into his text is when he says that the pigs were so clever that “[t]hey could think of a …show more content…
Orwell’s depiction of Stalin and the manipulated citizens in Russia are really spot on. For example, Orwell used pigs to represent Stalin and Trotsky because pigs are very clever and cunning just like Stalin and Trotsky. Orwell also depicts the citizens who were loyal to Stalin, but were betrayed by him in the end as the horse named Boxer. This is a very good symbolic representation of oblivious citizens in Russia because just like these loyal citizens, Boxer has been loyal to Napoleon and continues to work harder to please him only to be betrayed and sold by Napoleon. One way Orwell demonstrates the abuse of power that Stalin portrayed in the novel is when Napoleon threatens to reduce food rations if they do not help build the windmill. This is a prime depiction of Stalin’s abuse of power because just like Stalin would kill anyone who opposed him to show how much power he had, Napoleon threatens to take away rations of food as punishment for not helping build the windmill, even though he does little to nothing to help the production of the windmill at all. One underlying symbolic representation of Stalin’s U.S.S.R into Animal Farm is through the windmill itself. The windmill in Animal Farm is a good symbolic representation of industrialization in Stalin’s U.S.S.R. Both Napoleon and Stalin had too much power, which is what causes the ultimate downfall of both the Animal Farm and Russia at the time. As Wole Soyinka once said, “Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a