by Nathan Truman

Created on: April 28, 2008

Like many political leaders, as soon as they are granted even the smallest amount of power, they want more and they'll do anything to gain more power. The book and the movie Animal Farm tells of a group of animals on a farm that are tired of being ruled by the humans. A wise, old pig named Old Major tells the animals of a dream he had where all animals were equal and there is an abundant amount of food for everyone. A while after Old Major dies the revolution begins. At first everything is as Old Major had said it would be, the animals all work hard and everyone is rewarded, but as the story goes on we start to see the corruption in the pigs. They start manipulating the animals and end up in control. They start changing the Ten Commandments and make things more convenient for them. The first time that the animals realize what's going on is when Boxer gets taken away to the slaughter house when he was allegedly going to the vet.

At the end of the book it depicts a scene of all of the pigs and all of the humans from around there playing poker, smoking, drinking, and having a good old time. It is in this meeting that Napoleon claims that he is changing the name of the farm from Animal Farm back to the original name of Manor Farm. As the animals look in, they all notice that they can't tell the difference between the pigs and the humans. This could be taken physically as in the pigs appearance actually looked like pigs, or we could assume that it just means that the pig's mannerism is the same as the humans. Then the book ends with scene and we don't learn anything else as a reader.

In the movie however the ending is somewhat different. The scene of Napoleon claiming that they are changing the name back to Manor Farm only takes place with one other farmer. After this happens the animals decide that they should run away so they do. After many months of hiding the animals finally come to the conclusion that Napoleon's reign of terror is over. As the animals come back to the farm, what they see isn't a prosperous slave-run farm. What they see are rundown buildings, broken walls, and overgrown plants. The farm looks as if it had been abandoned a long time before the animals came back. They knew at that moment that the farm had been ridden of the tyranny that had previously occupied it. As Jesse approached the farm, a puppy comes out of the rubble and greets her. Jesse then goes on to say that "There are always survivors". This is most likely how the book would have ended had the author written more. The animals finally understood that Napoleon was just as bad if not worse than Jones.

Just like the Soviet Union, it did come to an end and the government that was full of empty promises and lies was ruined, broken, and gone. But there were survivors in the fallen state of things that needed to be saved. In the movie we see what a government is without devote people who respect the authority of their political leaders. We understand how easy people are deceived and how gullible they are. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. That is why education is so important for us. We need to learn things for our self and not rely on what other people say just because we think that they know more than we do. That is probably the main theme in Animal Farm and an extremely important lesson to us as American's and future voters.

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