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Animal Farm, published in 1945, is widely considered to be one of the cornerstones of George Orwell's literary legacy. Though it is a much shorter and somewhat less developed account of totalitarianism than his later work 1984, muted only by its fairy-tale qualities, it is no less frightening in presenting the dangers of blindly following a leader in a political climate of absolute power. Orwell presents to us the story of Manor Farm, run by the drunk, laggard farmer, Mr. Jones. The animals of this farm are under the poorly organized rule of their proprietor, mistreated and underfed.
One night, the animals, rallied by a speech from one of the senior animals of the farm, the pig, Old Major, decide that the only way to lead a better existence is to rebel - more precisely, revolt - against Jones, thereby pulling themselves from the yoke of human rule and enjoying for themselves the fruits of their own labor. Old Major dies shortly after his portentous speech and two pigs - Napoleon and Snowball - arise from the vacuum to successfully lead the animals in triumph over Jones chasing him and all other humans off the farm. With the renamed Animal Farm under new leadership, committees are formed along with a party flag, party slogans and songs. The pigs assume the top of the political hierarchy and set up rule over the other "lower" animals convincing them of the porcine superiority for planning, oversight of the farm and their new government. Both Napoleon and Snowball are young and intelligent, possessing a lust more for individual power than true equanimity among the other animals. However, it is shown that Napoleon maintains the greater cunning of the two.
In the midst of the senior pigs' personal rivalries, political cohesion among the farm's animal populous also splinters. Napoleon ousts Snowball in the midst of this division forever using political machinations to denounce him as a type of "Emmanuel Goldstein" figure, later used by Orwell as the agent provocateur of Big Brother in 1984. Orwell's use of names in this story serves as a form of irony to guide the narrative in such a way as to present a foreshadowing of the totalitarianism that is to come to Animal Farm. One can see that Napoleon will surely be the despotic lead pig when all is said and done. True to form, Napoleon assassinates all political rivals and manages to break every covenant of the animal community protected by a pack of dogs he has raised and indoctrinated with his own political world-view.
Squealer, the silver-tongued pig spokesperson for Napoleon's camp, evokes the popular connotation of a conniving liar, pushing Napoleon's agenda with poems created by the party's propaganda minister, Minimus. The main worker horse, Boxer, is a symbol of the everyman worker on the farm and promotes an image of someone willing to fight. In fact, Boxer does fight but selflessly for the party of the pigs and what he believes to be the good of the community of animals, forever chanting the mantras, "I will work harder" and "Napoleon is always right. " In Boxer, Orwell's irony is most biting. When Boxer lays mortally injured from overwork just before his retirement, Napoleon tells the other animals that he will be taken to town for medical treatment and is instead picked up by a horse slaughterer. This event summarizes the moral lesson Orwell wants his readers to understand in Animal Farm, that is, never to sacrifice a life of individual liberty unto a centralized power for when replicated in like forfeiture, it is likely to be perverted into a form of control over the masses. Tied to the lesson of Boxer, the ultimate irony is perhaps found in the donkey Benjamin, who surely is the only one with any horse-sense (if the pun can be pardoned) in the whole affair.
How fitting that the ass should reign as the supreme intellect in Orwell's world. Be that as it may, Orwell's symbol for the intellectual in society remains taciturn in those times of the most dire distress, perhaps the author's way of telling the reader of the dangers of waiting for death to come into one's own backyard before reacting to it; a condition exemplified all too well in the political climate of World War II when the work was written. In the spirit of true repression, Orwell has Napoleon keeping the tools of education from the masses he rules over. Only a select few of the animals are educated enough to read their own laws in the form of Seven Commandments printed on the side of the barn, which are artfully modified in instances when it is most convenient for Napoleon to adapt them to his personal lusts and political indiscretions. Ultimately, when Napoleon and his cronies have become utterly scrofulous and achieved unchallenged control, the commandments are done away with entirely and replaced by the slogan, "All animals are created equal but some animals are created more equal than others. " By the time the worker animals realize their economy has been one of more guns and less butter, it is too late for them to consider taking back any semblance of equality. Most animals on the farm were content to be in the role of coolie; to let the pigs rule and gain more power over their lives until the community fell into the iron grip of Napoleon and his cabinet.
By the time the animals are alerted to the incongruity of the poor quality of their lives and the gluttony of the pigs, we find Napoleon and the other pigs going against all of the communal tenets of the Animal Farm as originally conceived by Old Major. Instead of denouncing the vile life of man and exalting the animal with "Four legs good, two legs bad", the pigs emulate man's existence to the point they finally choose to walk on their hind legs in physical imitation; the new party slogan, replete with whip in hand, is now "Four legs good, two legs better!" Their physiognomy even more closely resembles power-thirsty men who have fattened in such a way as to emulate the gluttony of despots of the time. When Orwell speaks of the many chins of the pigs as they sit around the table playing cards in Jones' old farmhouse with the very men they professed to hate, there is more than a tongue-in-cheek resemblance to men like Going and Mussolini. Even though many have previously read Animal Farm as part of a core requirement for a high school or college curriculum, a book such as this is always worth rereading at a later point in life as a reminder on how historical events shape an understanding of any lived-in political climate. It was Orwell's hope that such foresight could be utilized as an aid for future citizens of the world to pinpoint potential sources of governmental malignancy. Animal Farm can be read independent of other sources to glean Orwell's message, for certain, but is better employed to supplement 1984, which, as an augmented exposition of his theme, paints a more realistic depiction of the social philosophy and political dangers he attempted to portray.
If this subject is of interest, H. G. Wells', The Time Machine and Arthur Koestler's, Darkness at Noon are two similarly-styled books for recommended reading. - Edward J. Carvalho
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