Political Satire In George Orwell's Animal Farm

The famous Animal Farm by George Orwell wasn’t always seen as a great political satire, it was in fact mistaken as a children’s book. Orwell wrote the book as an allegorical fable, he wrote Animal Farm this way to communicate meanings to audiences in different social contexts, some in which Orwell intended. George Orwell used Animal Farm to criticize the communist betrayal of the ideals the Soviet Union was based on. Orwell used events and characters to symbolize the different people and events that led up to the Russian revolution. The major themes of animal farm are power corrupts, revolutions tend to come full circle and devour their peoples, and even good, decent people are vulnerable to power hunger and leadership. These themes are carried …show more content…
Farmer Jones is a cruel and drunken owner of a farm called Manor Farm and treats his animal badly. The farm workers and animals do not control the farm’s operation. The farmer, Mr. Jones, doesn’t do any of the hard labor, but does the intellectual work. Jones is the embodiment of the tyranny against which the animal’s rebel, making this character represents tsar of Russia. Tsar and Jones shared similar leader characteristics such as starving and neglect their people, food shortage, and was rebelling against. The government was taken over by the Bolsheviks and in the novel farmer Jones was replaced by the pigs. The character old major had a dream about a world where animals overthrew their human masters. Old major created the seven commandments, warning the animals to not partake in human actions such as wearing clothes and sleeping in beds. Old Major is a character that can represent two historical figures, Karl Marx and Lenin. Karl Marx called for workers to unite against their capitalist oppressor, similar to how Old Major called for the animals to rebel against Jones. Lenin was the leader of the Bolsheviks Party in its successful October 1917 revolution against the czarist regime, Old major was in a sense the leader of the pigs until his death and the pig’s successful revolution against farmer …show more content…
The secret police connects to the guard dog. Boxer a dedicated hard worker represented the working class of Russia, fooled by the propaganda that Squealer feed the animals. Same events happened as Stalin’s propagandists gave the citizen manipulated stories. Fredrick is the owner of a nearby farm and is a greedy person. Napoleon starts to work with Fredrick selling him timber in exchange for money, which is counterfeit money. This represents Stalin working with Hitler and the creation of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 which was a Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Fredrick invaded the farm in an attempt to take it over, this is similar to when Germany invaded Russia in 1941 in attempted to conquer soviet territory. The ending of the novel represents the Tehran conference of 1943, where Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt held a meeting. A similar meeting takes place between the pigs and humans, showing that the animals had evolved to actually be so similar to humans that it was hard to tell them apart.
Animal Farm also had other symbolized like the song “Beast of England” which is supposed to symbolize “The Internationale” and Animalism which relates to Marxism-Leninism. Animal Farm connects to historical figures and events of the Russian Revolution throughout the story. There are many more historical connections that George Orwell created in his work